What kinds of problems do computers cause?

Answer 1

There are a number of problems computers can cause. Here are some of the areas of problems.

1. Health problems - If you're body is not well-supported while you use the computer, you could face problems with your wrists, back, shoulders, neck, etc. Eyestrain is a common computer problem too. If you have epilepsy, certain sounds and flashing images could possibly trigger a seizure.

2. Waste and environmental problems - Eventually, you will likely discard an old computer. It could go to a landfill and take up space if you don't recycle it. It takes petroleum products to make plastic, and quite a bit of plastic is used in computers. So if a petroleum tanker turns over and dumps its cargo in the ocean, that could harm wildlife and fish.

3. Mistakes, errors, and dangerous glitches - When the Pentium processors first came out, they had a problem with their floating point package, where certain mathematical computations resulted in grossly erroneous results. That could cause problems if you were trying to compute certain business or scientific things. However, there were workarounds to the problem, and that is not the most serious type of problem of this type.

Years ago, there were computers to give therapeutic doses of radiation to cancer patients. However, some patients were getting "cooked" by the radiation or facing lifelong problems after treatment. There were several reasons for this, and a number of safeguards and protections that were missed. The routines to take the input from the technician did not trap invalid responses. Some operators entered the wrong thing and then used the wrong key sequence to correct their error. However, they only blanked out what they typed, not really deleted it, and the computer took that as something other than the 2 valid choices given. The code of the program also contained "race conditions," meaning that there is a possibility that the data needed for a computation sometimes doesn't get where it needs to be in time. Then on the radiation and mechanical end of things, there were missing safeguards. It should have been impossible for both the high dose "antenna" and the low dose "antenna" to both be in operation at the same time -- but sometimes that happened, giving much more radiation than the intended high dose. There should have been interlock switches, physical barriers, or other protections in place.

Traffic lights are often controlled by computers. Imagine if the signals were contradictory, such as green lights in all directions. That could cause serious wrecks for sure.

4. Laziness - While humans are to blame for this, computers do make it easier, where you forget how to do certain things without a computer. In a typical store, if the power goes out and they only have emergency lights, most cashiers won't be able to ring up transactions, even if store policy says they could do it by hand.

5. Preoccupation, personal injury and carelessness - From time to time, there are stories of people texting or using other technology and jumping in front of cars, running into trees, etc.

Answer 2

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