The Trouble with Humans

From time to time I will run across a story about a business that has instituted a basic safety measure – like passwords to keep non-customers off a business’ free Wi-Fi system, for example – that is being excoriated for doing so by people who insist that such a measure is unnecessary, insulting, discriminatory, or all of the above. As a consumer and potential customer I can understand these points – no one wants to be inconvenienced or even blamed for the bad conduct of other people. As a management consultant and a manager with experience in the retail and food service sections, however, I can tell you that there is no behavior so uncivilized, antisocial or disgusting that somebody somewhere won’t feel compelled to do it at their first opportunity. As evidence, let me offer the case of public libraries across the United States who have offered 3-D printing services to their patrons only to find themselves having to forbid the printing of guns, drug paraphernalia, or sex toys…

If you missed it the first time you can access the ChicagoTribune story about this here, but the basic concept is fairly simple. Over the past few years 3-D printers – devices capable of creating three-dimensional objects by cutting sectional views (or “slices”) from digital templates out of some suitable medium and then fusing or laminating them together – have gone from massive, expensive industrial equipment to machines small enough and cheap enough for home use. They’re still a bit too expensive for a lot of people to buy just for the fun of making random objects, but they’re well within the reach of a well-funded public library, and some such institutions have started buying them and letting patrons use them for a modest fee. In theory, this is a wonderful idea – it allows families to teach their children about the possibilities of 3-D rendering on the computer, and then print out an actual object using the printer. Unfortunately, this ignores the basic nature of human beings, and our ability to ruin just about anything…

Many of my readers (assuming I have readers) will remember the flap that appeared last year when the plans for an all-plastic handgun that could be fabricated by most home-use 3-D printers were released onto the Internet. Much of this died down when it became clear that such a gun would be far more dangerous to the person trying to fire it than it would to the target, but the plans are still out there, and it isn’t hard to imagine a variety of illegal purposes to which such an artifact could be put. Even more problematic, perhaps, are objects that can be used for non-violent but still inappropriate purposes, all of which are also available in many places online. Even if we accept that the development and dissemination of such files qualifies as protected speech under the First Amendment (there seems to be some debate on this topic) it’s still not the sort of thing one wants to have to explain to small children while working on a family craft project at the public library…

Now, it could definitely be argued that people using the public library’s 3-D printer to make inappropriate objects isn’t really any different from the other inappropriate ways people use the library’s computers, but that doesn’t address the underlying issue. I personally believe in free access to information for all users, including those too poor to afford their own computer or Internet connection; I also believe that censorship in general is wrong. But at the same time I have issues with not being able to use the library because a collection of homeless people is using it as an emergency shelter, and I don’t believe that families should be unable to use the library (or its special new printers) because other members of the community insist on looking up – and in this case, printing – images that are inappropriate in a public setting…

A common catch-phrase around my household is “Another beautiful idea – ruined by people.” I could probably write an entire blog just about these situations, and I certainly have no concrete suggestions for how to solve this one. I’m just pointing out that sometimes safety regulations are there for a reason – and that no matter how innocent something appears to be in the abstract, we as managers have to be prepared to deal with trouble when the idea is implemented in the real world…