The following article first appeared in the Digital Education newsletter.

I've been running a series called Dystopian Visions. In each article I look at a story written years ago that ruminates on the possible unintended consequences of developments in technology. I've compiled an interim index with links to each article so far. Here's a new one:

A Sound of Thunder

One of my favourite stories, this one by Ray Bradbury looks at the possible consequences of making a small, apparently insignificant, change in the past. Indeed, some people attribute the origin of the term 'the butterfly effect' -- in which a small change results in a disproportionately large outcome -- to this story.

Now, I realise that we don't have time travel, but I still think this story makes for an interesting starting point for discussion. An obvious application, for instance, would be the accuracy of a machine that administers medication. A small change in the program controlling the dosage, like moving the decimal point one place to the left or right, could prove fatal.

A less dramatic example would be the work I was commissioned to do some years ago by a company. I was asked to construct a spreadsheet that would keep track of their costs and profits, but with a lot more features than that brief description would suggest.

Because the whole thing was complex enough, the company told me not to worry about pence, and to round amounts up or down to the nearest pound.

I thought, and told them, that this was a mistake because the rounded figures would grow further and further away from the actual figures over time. They wouldn't listen.

What I did, though, was to design the spreadsheet in such a way that only the display showed the rounded figures. Behind the scenes, all the calculations were based on the real figures rather than the rounded ones.

Fortunately, when, a couple of months later, they said they did want the real figures after all, it took me just a few minutes to change the display accordingly.

On another financial matter, a member of my time came to me looking very nervous one day. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me he'd made a tiny error in a formula. Consequently, far from having a surplus of £20,000, we had a deficit.

But it's not all about money. Bradbury's story posits changes in language and even politics, in a richly entertaining way.

You can find the story in this collection (Amazon associate link).