From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Dec 08 1999 - 18:44:17 MST
KPJ <kpj@sics.se> writes:
> I have considered the possibility of taking a buss trip to Amsterdam, NL, and
> stay away from the cold for a number of weeks, just in case the electricity
> grid fails up in the North.
Why, do you doubt the reliability of the Swedish powergrid? Just look
at how well it managed the storm earlier this week ;-)
(FYI to outsiders, the snowstorm crashed the grid for around 100,000
buildings in western Sweden.)
Actually, this brings up an important and interesting transhuman
question: how to avoid becoming dependent on fragile technological
infrastructures? As our technology gets more complex, the number of
potential bugs or unexpected interactions grows, and economical
pressures disfavor too much redundancy. Maybe things tend towards a
state of self-organised criticality, where disasters occur on all
scales, leading to safety precautions being taken, but they are
balanced by faults due to new technology.
Maybe the trains will not go on time even in utopia.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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