You will notice the word responsibility repeated through this issue. Ralston argues for finding hard facts and verifiable incidents before talking about any problems with time-sensitive programs. He points out the absence of hard data. We need to anticipate some failures and plan ahead. Keep copies of all your financial statements.
Organizations ought to be ready to send out checks by hand.
If railroad signals fail, we can keep freight and people moving by using humans to signal trains onward. Airports can slow traffic to a pace that can be dealt with. Since we deal with weather-caused disasters all the time, we should likewise be able to cope with any stoppages or shortages from computer failure. Perhaps that explains why concerned computer scientists are focusing on nuclear and chemical hazards rather than the everyday problems. Accordingly, in this issue we devote most of our attention to these questions.