From: Phil (flick@populus.net)
Date: Wed Dec 08 1999 - 19:22:59 MST
> 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.
My intuition is that there should be a tendency for this to happen.
But a social organism is not mindless, and the progress towards the
edge of chaos is counterbalanced by litigation and sensationalist
newspaper articles that make people feel they are in more danger
than they are.
I remember begging (unsuccessfully) my college library not to throw
out their card catalog when they put their catalog online.
I remember when a camp I go to in Michigan got a gas
water heater installed, and much to my dismay they threw out
the old woodburning water-heater we used to stoke at 6AM, rather
than leaving it in place at no cost.
I remember looking (a few days ago) through magazines full of log
house designs, and finding not one that could actually be heated by a
woodburning stove; all had vast open spaces that relied on gas heating.
It is very hard to convince people to maintain backup systems. Americans
have an inner need to throw things out. Not throwing things out proves
that you are poor. Americans think that if they don't have something
to throw out, it means they aren't buying enough.
Phil
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