Lessons from The Computer Outage

The July 18, 2024 worldwide computer outage shook up the world and gave humanity a wake-up call about the fragility of the technological systems we’ve created. Critical services at hospitals, airports, banks, and government facilities around the world were all suddenly unavailable. As impressive as our new digital technologies are, these now massively deployed systems are also quite fragile in the larger scheme of things. Computers and the communications systems that support them can concentrate huge amounts of informational power and control by wielding it like an Archimedean lever to manage the physical world. A cynic could probably argue that we’re now building our civilizational infrastructures on a foundation of sand.

Shifting to a more holistic perspective, humanity’s ability to continue to build these kinds of systems runs into the limitations of our conceptual ability to embrace their vastness and complexity. So, the question becomes: Is there a limit in the natural order of things to the amount of technological complexity that’s sustainable? At what point in pushing the envelope of technology advancement do we get in over our heads and to what degree is a kind of Promethean hubris involved? We may in fact be at a tipping point where it’s worth asking if we can even control what we’ve created and whether the “harmful side effects” of seeming constant chaos is now militating against the quality of life.

Finally, the advent of under-the-radar hyper-technologies such as nanotechnology and genetic engineering also need to be considered in this context. These are also technologies that can only be understood in the conceptual realm and not in any concrete and more immediate way because their primary and secondary effects on society, culture, and politics can no longer be successfully envisioned. Decisively moving into these realms, therefore, is like ad hoc experimentation with nature itself. But as many environmentalists have pointed out, “Nature bats last.” New and seemingly exciting prospects for advanced hyper-technology may dazzle us, but if in the process they also blind us, how can we guide the progress of technology with wisdom?