Scientific analysis of systems

[On Our own]

Which explains why collapse of complex systems can occur very rapidly in this era of interconnectivity.

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6887

this comes from a recent issue with a defense contractor that effected the satellites which track troops. Their IT system began to experience major issues, freezeups, blackouts, etc recently. Since the system was no longer centrally located, it took their top people the better part of two days to isolate the issue. In the meanwhile, there were massive ancillary impacts of their system's failures. (Some of this is rumor and cannot be verified as I suspect it may be classified.)

In the end it turned out that one person had installed a bug ridden (not a virus, not a hack, just bad programming) patch onto their own computer! It was not a hack, it was not intentional. Yet it very nearly brought down their entire system. Interconnectivity used to mean redundancy - I do not think it does any more. If we lost just a couple of satellites we would be in serious trouble.

 

[mamagoose]

Far more complex than I am able to understand.

I will say this though; if you make something (i.e. a system or machine) incredibly complex, it will inevitably make your life incredibly complicated.

That's why you gotta stick with K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid).

 

[valmom]

Interesting presentation, and the comments afterward were actually well thought out and varied. (unlike so many articles that have comments that tend to devolve). I'm going to have to think about this- a lot of it makes sense to me, but I don't want to put myself in the camp of the wild-eyed "the world is ending momentarily" folks. The concept of the step down/ slow collapse sounds like what my view of what is happening is.

 

[valmom]

And, the article made me go look up and re-read one of my all time favorite poems. I am not a religious person, and never have been, but I love this.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?