Murphy’s laws and classic FUBBs through the ages

Professor Swannell looks back at column from ten years ago

IT WAS a classic FUBB. We are so sophisticated that around one million were completely stuffed by a single misdirected excavator. It seems to be a fine demonstration of the advice that, when you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging….

I know of several laws attributable to Mr Murphy. My favourite postulates that when there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the first.

If you wonder how it could have happened then the lesser known Weller’s Law gives a clue. Weiler said, “Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself ”. So spare a thought for the excavator driver and the guy who put the cable there.

Thousands of teenagers, panic struck by the thought that they can’t SMS their mates, feel isolated and unloved. Telemarketers, with a whole morning when they can’t annoy anybody, do estimates of how much compensation they might claim.

Cashless and ATM-deprived, potential shoppers have to whack it on the credit card except that it doesn’t work. The cashed-up minority have to cope with checkout chicks who have no way of finding out the correct change to give for a $10 purchase.

The FUBB Award was an honoured tradition among workshop technicians at the University of Queensland. In days long gone I had the privilege of overseeing their work. They were a great group of tradespeople.

The foreman’s solemn monthly duty was to present the award to whoever had made the biggest stuff-up in the previous 30 days. The F*** Up Beyond Belief trophy was a treasured recognition of human fallibility.

A concrete mix with cement unfortunately overlooked, a thread cut onto the wrong end of a steel rod, a soil sample lovingly transported from a distant site but dropped in a carpark puddle. All these were the stuff of which FUBBS are made.

Theoretically, FUBBS go far beyond such practical mishaps. FUBBS are decisions made that ought not to have been made and vice-versa. They are also the laughably wrong assertions that, with hindsight, give reassurance to those of us who wonder how we could have made our own stuffups.

The President of the Digital Equipment Corporation could declare, in 1977, that “there is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home”.

In 1943, the chairman of IBM remarked, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”.

Many, many years earlier a Western Union internal memo suggested that “this telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication…”

In 1962, with equal brilliance, Decca Records rejected the Beatles because “we don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out”.

In 1930, Frank Whittle’s plan for the jet engine caused a distinguished Cambridge Engineering professor to comment, “A jet engine, you say? Very interesting, my boy, but it will never work”.

Mind you, in 1895, Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, London, had gone a bit further, asserting “heavier than air flying machines are impossible”.

Computer-wise in 1981, Bill Gates allegedly said that “640K ought to be enough for everybody”. He wasn’t referring to his salary…

When you think about it, there are many science or technical things that are worrying if they go wrong. I like the list produced by the American physician and essayist, the late Dr Lewis Thomas.

“The cloning of human beings is on the list of things to worry about from science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers”.

There are many ways to achieve FUBB and they don’t always involve an excavator.