My highlights:
Safety protocols [are] intentional patterns of constraint on human behavior that reduce injury, disease, and death.
We often do no know or cannot afford to care about all the consequences of our choices. Workers need a reliable source of short-term solutions to deal with this unstable, unpredictable matrix. Protocols are the first line of defense against hazards. We intentionally constrain our behavior to prevent exposure to hazards. New norms, divisions of labor, and decision-making hierarchies emerge to enforces such constraints. This results in a new protocol-based social order.
Protocols have nearly eliminated fatal workplace accidents. We are at the end of the history of safety.
Safety is a dynamic non-event. Stapling without pricking yourself is a dynamic non-event. After a while, the only actions that catch our attention are those with outcome values below the “limit of unacceptable performance”. All non-events are alike, where every event is eventful in its own way.
Systems theory: “unexpected interactions” between “tightly coupled” components within a system cause accidents, and such accidents are unpredictable.
Accidents caused only 25% of workplace fatalities globally. Disease cause the rest. Health, like safety, is a dynamic non-event. Safety is about avoiding episodic risks of injury or death. Health is, first, about avoiding cumulative, irreparable damage. The world of work is a long way from solving the problems of chronic disease, burnout, and emotional health.
Protocols are born as a first response to new hazards, which arise from technological progress, environmental change, changes to the social order, and changes to the definition of safety. They influence social hierarchies, soft power gradients, norms, and values. The social order directs technological progress. Technological progress changes the environment. And so on.
Protocols evolve as a result of:
- mutation, caused by error in protocol replication, tinkering, and design. Tinkering appears to be the sweet spot. An aspiring protocol hacker should aim to act like a coach, rather than an engineer.
- selection pressure, caused by many factors.
For a protocol to die, it needs only not to be used.