My plan, sitting down to write this log entry, is to present some philosophy about technology, redundancy, simplicity, and human error.I’m still battling the tense: not sure if that is my plan, or if that was my plan: I’ve realized that of more immediate concern, or at least more civilized priority, is an introduction. So allow me introduce: Me! My name is Mickey and I am the new co-author of WCDC. Hopefully I can help make this discourse between us a little more frequent.
“Discourse,” I say? And “us”? Sure, I maintain that this is a conversation. Certainly between you, the reader, and Ernesto and me, the writers. But the “us” still remains unclear: Is it between you and me? Ernesto and me? You and Us? Us and Them? Besides bringing more frequent updates, what is my role here? Am I the ying to Ernesto’s yang? Am I the Mac to his PC? (Yes, I do use a Mac, and no, Ernesto and I don’t always agree.) After a little thinking about all that, I decided to take my own advice, the one that I meant to write about before the whole introduction business confused things: I decided to keep things simple. Forget about playing a role against my co-author, who is after all the originator of this blog and therefore has last say. Forget about keeping in costume. Just say what I have to say. Practice the fine art of spouting. Isn’t Spouting what blogs are all about anyway? And what better way to start spouting than with a bit of philosophy. So here is my spout about simplicity. And this being a technology blog, I will talk about simplicity in technology.
In deductive sciences, we often follow Occam’s razor and accept that the simplest explanation is the best. This is common practice in areas where we observe a phenomenon which we subsequently try to explain. In technology, however, we often create the phenomenon. And we quite often overcomplicate it. The problem with this is not the creation or complication: computers and technology will perform their assigned tasks regardless of how simple or complex this tangle of tasks may be. The problem is that we assume that technology might fail while failing to remember that people fail as well. In fact, people fail more frequently. We take great pains to create fail-proof technology that is self-healing, doubly-redundant and fail-safe. We add spares, and spares to the spares. We double our servers, and add redundant channels and pathways. And things work. You take down part A and the Thing stays up. You bring A back and take parts C and B down and the Thing still stays up. That’s the beauty of technology: It does what it’s supposed to, no matter how complex its design. A technology architect can design a very complex system that performs exactly the way it’s supposed to, down to the last specification. Whether by assumption or by mandate from the customer, the design can be completely redundant with every piece independent of any other. And it works. The technology, that is, works. (more…)
