Re: millenial madness

Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
09 Dec 1999 02:44:17 +0100

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. 

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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