Engineering: The Interloper Phenomena
The Interloper P henomena This is a computer folklore story I heard many years ago. The story illustrated the essence of technology security. I do not know how the actual story’s facts, however, the story can be told with different facts; however, the essence and outcome would be the same. In the mid-1970s, Wang was a company in Massachusetts who fostered a computer-based word processing system. Boston legal companies hired armies of legal secretaries. The secretaries would type pages and pages of legal documents flawlessly without errors. Most legal contracts required multiple original documents for signatures. The effort required to constantly key typewriters quickly and accurately could take years to be highly skilled. A typical large law firm could have dozens of legal secretaries. Wang’s marketing to the law firm was a simple business proposal. A Wang word processing system can replace many legal secretaries. The cost and the return made eliminating lega...