March 2006
Beginner
272 pages
5h 48m
English
Thesis 73Everyware must default to harmlessness.
The first of our principles concerns what happens when ubiquitous systems fail. What happens when a critical percentage of sensors short out, when the building's active lateral bracing breaks down, when weather conditions disrupt the tenuous wireless connection? Or what if there's a blackout?
"Graceful degradation" is a term used in engineering to express the ideal that if a system fails, if at all possible it should fail gently in preference to catastrophically; functionality should be lost progressively, not all at once. A Web browser might be unable to apply the proper style sheet to a site's ...
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