In Search of Certainty

Chapter 14. Epilogue

“How we have advanced, thanks to the Machine.”

E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops

How do we want society’s information technology to behave? Do we expect to control it, or merely live along side it? Should it be centralized (making it easy to locate and brand with identity), or decentralized (making it fast and resilient)? The answers surely depend on how we, the human masters of intent, want to interact with it.

When I began working with computer installations in the 1990s, neither computer science nor engineering had a clear answer on the subject of how to prevent computer systems from going off the rails. Indeed, in spite of minor advances, little seems to have happened to change this³⁰⁷. These formative decades of the new millennium have not yet adapted to the underlying challenges, and the concepts of stability and knowledge-oriented cooperation still appear to be too difficult for mainstream consumption; but progress comes in fits and starts.

We now know that we project some of our own human habits onto technoloy: automated decision-making itself is the main reason for instability in software systems, yet still flowchart programmability remains an irresistable temptation in the information technology industry. This is a minefield we shall have to come to terms with, when disseminating smart infrastructure for public consumption.

The enduring challenge of technology is to make the dialogue between humans and their tools complementary. For that to be realized, we ...