A Day Of Monstrously Large Failures

A docked cruise ship sinks in New Orleans, Outlook outage Day 2, FAA ground stop…some day yesterday was.  That sounds like the opening to a spy thriller or superhero movie.  Too many things go wrong on a single day for it to be a coincidence, but only our intrepid hero reads the tea leaves and sets out on the adventure to discover the otherwise undetected miscreant and save the world from destruction.  Sadly, its not fiction, all that stuff really happened yesterday and it is all unrelated…or is it?

Before you accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist, I am not saying there is a malevolent actor out there perpetrating some nefarious scheme, but there are a couple of factors the incident hold in common.

The first is technology.  It is currently unknown what broke on the oil tanker that rammed and sank the cruise ship in New Orleans, but it is fair to say that computers are an important part of ship operations anymore.  The Outlook outage and the ground stop are all about computer tech and its failure.  Look, I was an early adopter of micro computer technology.  I, in fact, built one from a kit, running an operating system calls “CPM,” before Apple ever marketed their first home machine.  And then I watched the technology expand at an amazing pace.  Long before what they are trying to tell us is A.I. came on the scene computers became so complex that no single individual could figure out precisely what was happening inside them.  Too much code, too many modules for any one person to truly comprehend.

It used to be that a guy with a few wrenches and screwdrivers could turn your car into a hot rod.  Now your engine is more computer than engine and you needs thousands of dollars in tools to work on it. And even the guy with those tools is only swapping module – without a full understanding of what happens in the module.

Such complexity demands reliability. That oil tanker in New Orleans cannot just pull into a service station for a new module, and small changes in big system like Outlook and ATC can ripple far beyond a local areas control.  The size and complexity of these system demand reliability because, as we saw yesterday, the cost of breakdown is far beyond even something like a new car.

Which brings me to the other factor – people.  People design, build and control these things.  But people are notoriously unreliable.  Don’t kid yourself, you are.  You make major mistakes everyday.  You bail out of work when you shouldn’t or you do not get the homework in on time.  We all do.

As tech grow larger, more complex, and more pervasive, the need for reliability grows as well.  But can people, notoriously unreliable people, produce something that is so reliable?  More importantly, can they maintain it?  Everything breaks down unless people reliably care for it.  Particularly when we think our tech is supposed to make our life “easier.”  Easier makes for lazier,  Easier also distracts us because we are going to focus somewhere else just to stay busy.

Modernity might not be as wonderful as we think it will be.

Working through the pile:

Travelled this week, did not write as much as hoped.  The pile is large.

I disagree.  I know too many grands that are actually doing the parenting while the parents are too busy with their career.

I disagree.  Liberal Christianity, which is denominational Protestantism, is dying – check the attendance numbers.  Something else accounts for Talarico.

The university has become an instrument of propaganda and indoctrination.  it is no longer about education.

I cannot recommend this because I have not seen it.  But it sounds fascinating.

Because far left causes and not liberal and generally some sort of misdirection.

California – one smart decision in a sea of failure, corruption and crime.  Follow their model at your peril.