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t levels of meaning that can conflict.
Human beings can manage, more or less, with human language because we can catch the gist of it.
Computers, despite years of effort in "artificial intelligence," have proven spectacularly bad in "catching the gist" of anything at all. The tiniest bit of semantic grit may still bring the mightiest computer tumbling down. One of the most hazardous things you can do to a computer program is try to improve it--to try to make it safer. Software "patches" represent new, untried un-"stable" software, which is by definition riskier.
The modern telephone system has come to depend, utterly and irretrievably, upon software. And the System Crash of January 15, 1990, was caused by an IMPROVEMENT in software. Or rather, an ATTEMPTED improvement.
As it happened, the problem itself--the problem per se -- took this form. A piece of telco software had been written in C language, a standard language of the telco field. Within the C software was a long "do... while" construct. The "do... while" construct contained a "switch" statement. The "switch" statement contained an "if" clause. The "if" clause contained a "break." The "break" was SUPPOSED to "break" the "if clause." Instead, the "break" broke the "switch" statement.
That was the problem, the actual reason why people picking up phones on January 15, 1990, could not talk to one another.
Or at least, that was the subtle, abstract, cyberspatial seed of the problem. This is how the problem manifested itself from the realm of programming into the realm of real life.
The System 7 software for AT&T's 4ESS switching station, the "Generic 44E14 Central Office Switch Software," had been extensively tested, and was considered very stable. By the end of 1989, eighty of AT&T's switching systems nationwide had been programmed with the new software. Cautiously, thirty-four stations were left to run the slower, less-capable System 6, because AT&T suspected there might be shakedown problems with t
