Accidental Innovation

Innovation is not always planned. Throughout history, accidental inventions have shaped our future. Gun powder, for instance, was an accidental discovery. Chinese alchemists accidentally discovered the formula when attempting to concoct an elixir of immortality (Travel China Guide, n.d.). Another more recent accidental innovation that is well-known Post-It notes. Post-It notes can trace its beginnings to Spencer Silver’s acrylate copolymer microspheres. Silver sought out to develop a super strong adhesive for 3M that would be used in the aerospace industry (Hiskey, 2011). Silver’s acrylate copolymer microspheres adhesive was the exact opposite; however, this accidental discovery helped create the foundation for beloved Post-It notes. What about some less-known accidental innovations? Have you heard of Chaos Engineering or Smart Dust? If not, you are not alone. The intent of this writing is to help shed some light on these two accidental discoveries and the forces that helped shaped them.

Chaos Engineering

At its core, Chaos Engineering is a form of stress testing (Thelin, 2021). The objective of stress testing is to intentionally break a system. Stress testing provides programmers and developers with the ability to determine the robustness of an offering. Thelin (2021) indicates that this method of stress testing is now used across large-scale tech companies to catch unpredictable situations, traffic levels, or unexpected conditions. This type of testing can help provide organizations with a better understanding of real-world capabilities.

The years 2008-2011 were tumultuous for Netflix. As the company continued to grow and introduced streaming capabilities, their on-premises datacenter scalability and resiliency started to raise eyebrows. The company finally experienced a critical outage in 2008. Netflix devoted a significant amount of resources to dissecting the infrastructure to determine how the failure occurred, why it had such a large impact, and how a similar situation in the future could be prevented (Thelin, 2021). As a result, the teams at Netflix gained a deeper, more complex understanding of the existing architecture and how it all tied together. The consensus was that the 2008 on-prem architecture locked the company into several single points of failures.  

Realizing that the current architecture locked the company into single points of failure, and that the continued growth of users and streaming services required a more robust architecture, Netflix looked to the cloud. In 2008, Netflix started migrating their architecture to the cloud – Amazon Web Services (AWS). According to Rosenthal (2021), the move did not go as planned. Migrating to the cloud did not provide the boosts in performance that were theorized. In fact, the move simply multiplied the single-point-of-failure effect (Rosenthal, 2021).

Netflix had just spent considerable resources a few years prior troubleshooting their on-prem environment. With a newfound understanding of their environment, Netflix was determined to finally solve their woes. Netflix created a program called Chaos Monkey; this program would randomly shut down components of the system (Thelin, 2021). This allowed Netflix to test individual components and services to determine if they were robust and resilient enough operate under stressful and unexpected conditions. Seeing the utility of Chaos Monkey, the program was made open-source in 2012 (Thelin, 2021). Although it may have been unintentional, Netflix’s trials and tribulations have created a new method of stress testing – Chaos Engineering – that is quickly gaining popularity.

Smart Dust

            Silicon remains the substance of choice when designing and manufacturing computer components (Templeton, 2015). Silicon has many useful properties that make it a viable choice for computer chips. This element is what is known as a semi-conductor. A semi-conductor sits in between a conductor (that provides low electrical resistance) and an insulator (that provides how electrical resistance). Transistors must be turned on and off at will, making the semiconductor the perfect choice. The most compelling argument for silicon is that the substance is the most readily available semiconductor on the planet (Templeton, 2015). Silicon may need to be replaced with a different element or substance as advancements such as quantum computing become more available mainstream. Silicon chips, however, are still expected to be used across a variety of technologies in the coming decades.

            One accidental discovery as it relates to silicon chips is what has been dubbed “smart dust.” A student named Jamie Link was working with silicon computer chips when one of the chips unexpectedly exploded into dust (British Science Association, n.d.). What the student discovered is that this exploded silicon chip dust provided the ability to be used as sensors. This is a revolutionary discovery. A common use case for this type of sensing capability is to detect salt in concrete (British Science Association, n.d.). Salt is a substance that is known to weaken the integrity of concrete. Modern engineering relies heavily on concrete. Roads, bridges, buildings, and other structures are a few examples of the use of concrete. The ability to monitor concrete with smart dust is a welcomed safety feature.

            The idea of this technology was first theorized in the 1990s by Dr. Kris Pister, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California (Nanowerk, n.d.). The idea comes from Pister’s conception of intelligent wireless sensors. Today, smart dust is able to wirelessly transmit virtually any information about an environment to include light, temperature, sound, vibration, toxins, and much more (Nanowerk, n.d.). Smart dust is the ultimate Internet of Things (IoT) sensor. In 1992, the military provided funding for Pister’s research into smart dust.

            Innovation is not always planned. Some of the world’s most well-known innovations and discoveries were accidental in nature – a byproduct of another endeavor. The ingenuity of the human mind is truly a remarkable feat. The stress testing provided by Chaos Engineering and intelligent wireless sensors provided by smart dust are only two examples of accidental innovative discoveries. It will be exciting to follow what accidental discoveries will be made in the near future.

References

British Science Association. (n.d.). Accidental discoveries. https://www.britishscienceweek.org/app/uploads/2015/10/NSEW-Accidental-Discoveries-Primary-PackFULLOPT.pdf

Hiskey, D. (2011, November 9). Post-it notes were invented by accident. https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/11/post-it-notes-were-invented-by-accident/

Nanowerk. (n.d.). What is smart dust and how is it used? https://www.nanowerk.com/smartdust.php

Rosenhal, C. (2021, June 25). What chaos engineering is (and isn’t). https://devops.com/what-chaos-engineering-is-and-isnt/

Templeton, G. (2015, June 22). What is silicon, and why are computer chips made from it? https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/208501-what-is-silicon-and-why-are-computer-chips-made-from-it

Thelin, R. (2021, April 23). Bytesize: 2 accidental discoveries that changed programming. https://www.educative.io/blog/bytesize-accidental-discoveries-in-programming

Travel China Guide. (n.d.). Four great inventions of ancient China. https://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/focus/inventions.htm#:~:text=Unlike%20paper%20and%20printing%2C%20the,being%20used%20in%20military%20affairs.