Software Issue: No Big Deal. Move On

July 17, 2025

No smart software involved with this blog post. (An anomaly I know.)

The British have had some minor technical glitches in their storied history. The Comet? An airplane, right? The British postal service software? Let’s not talk about that. And now tennis. Jeeves, what’s going on? What, sir?

“British-Built Hawk-Eye Software Goes Dark During Wimbledon Match” continues this game where real life intersects with zeros and ones. (Yes, I know about Oxbridge excellence.) The write up points out:

Wimbledon blames human error for line-calling system malfunction.

Yes, a fall person. What was the problem with the unsinkable ship? Ah, yes. It seemed not to be unsinkable, sir.

The write up says:

Wimbledon’s new automated line-calling system glitched during a tennis match Sunday, just days after it replaced the tournament’s human line judges for the first time. The system, called Hawk-Eye, uses a network of cameras equipped with computer vision to track tennis balls in real-time. If the ball lands out, a pre-recorded voice loudly says, “Out.” If the ball is in, there’s no call and play continues. However, the software temporarily went dark during a women’s singles match between Brit Sonay Kartal and Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Centre Court.

Software glitch. I experience them routinely. No big deal. Plus, the system came back online.

I would like to mention that these types of glitches when combined with the friskiness of smart software may produce some events which cannot be dismissed with “no big deal.” Let me offer three examples:

Medical misdiagnoses related to potent cancer treatments
Aircraft control systems
Financial transaction in legitimate and illegitimate services.

Have the British cornered the market on software challenges? Nope.

That’s my concern. From Telegram’s “let our users do what they want” to contractors who are busy answering email, the consequences of indifferent engineering combined with minimally controlled smart software is likely to do more than fail during a tennis match.

Stephen E Arnold, July 17, 2025

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Business process, News, Technology

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.