{"id":230,"date":"2008-12-22T14:06:58","date_gmt":"2008-12-22T21:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/?p=230"},"modified":"2021-06-12T03:36:55","modified_gmt":"2021-06-12T03:36:55","slug":"resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/2008\/12\/22\/resilience\/","title":{"rendered":"Resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"inline_image\" src=\"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-images\/inline\/ants.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nHow much change can a system absorb and still remain viable and functional?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Resilient systems have a high threshold for functioning under change.\u00a0 The internet is resilient.\u00a0 It was designed to conitue working during war by\u00a0instantly rerouting data traffic around damage anywhere in the overall system.<\/p>\n<p>The opposite of resilient is brittle.\u00a0 General Motors is brittle.\u00a0 It is a centrally controlled corporation whose weakest link, its\u00a0central control and management,\u00a0is diseased killing the entire system.<\/p>\n<p>To really oversimplify things, here&#8217;s a little\u00a0free association:<\/p>\n<table class=\"nib_table\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<th>Brittle<\/th>\n<th>Resilient<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Large parts<\/td>\n<td>Small parts<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Complex parts<\/td>\n<td>Simple parts<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Small quantities<\/td>\n<td>Enormous quanitites<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Co-dependency<\/td>\n<td>Independent interconnectedness<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Specialization<\/td>\n<td>Generalization<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Low redundancy<\/td>\n<td>High redundancy<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Command and control<\/td>\n<td>Evolutionary<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Fewer but more vulnerable links<\/td>\n<td>More but less vulnerable links<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Rigid<\/td>\n<td>Adaptable<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Monolithic<\/td>\n<td>Diverse<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>General Motors<\/td>\n<td>The Internet<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>A cheetah<\/td>\n<td>An ant colony<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Lions<\/td>\n<td>Hyenas<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Ritual warfare<\/td>\n<td>Guerrila warfare<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Concentration<\/td>\n<td>Distribution<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Complicated<\/td>\n<td>Simple<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Easy short term profits<\/td>\n<td>Long term sustainability<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Damage to brittle systems quickly matastasizes acrcoss the entire system leading to catastrophic disruptions and collapse.\u00a0\u00a0Meanwhile resilient systems keep damage localized allowing the entire system to continue functioning normally while things either get repaired or culled.<\/p>\n<p>The scope of our current economic troubles are I think a\u00a0direct\u00a0result\u00a0of global financial systems that have become increasingly brittle over the past many years&#8211;making the entire system extremely vulnerable to what would have otherwise been local fraud and corruption.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Where did this brittleness come from?\u00a0 Traditional business\u00a0management sees\u00a0redundancies as inefficiencies to be rooted out, strives to make small into large economies of scale, and fids distribution freightening due to a lack of control.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When things are good business can realize greater profit from brittle economies of scale and centralization than it can from resilience.\u00a0 Of course when thigs go bad and the brittleness shatters, business tries to hold\u00a0a taxpayer stick-up.\u00a0\u00a0Reach for the sky, suckers!<\/p>\n<p>What does this mean for design?<\/p>\n<p>Well, resilience (even more than simplicity, because it assumes simplicity)\u00a0should be a primary design priniciple.\u00a0 The more\u00a0change our designs can\u00a0withstand before they collapse the better.\u00a0 And if that means less short term profits, fine because the long term benefits are greater.<\/p>\n<p>To survive I think we need to leave behind industrial modes of thinking and begin to think small, think simple, think coordinated.<\/p>\n<p>As Schumacher says, small is beautiful beacause that&#8217;s the scale on which we live our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How much change can a system absorb and still remain viable and functional?\u00a0 Resilient systems have a high threshold for functioning under change.\u00a0 The internet is resilient.\u00a0 It was designed to conitue working during war by\u00a0instantly rerouting data traffic around damage anywhere in the overall system. The opposite of resilient is brittle.\u00a0 General Motors is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/parCYG-3I","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":345,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scoobr.com\/niblettes_old\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}