Sunday, August 17, 2003

NY Times: Ohio Lines Failed Before Blackout. [Scripting News] As I read the developing stories on the big blackout, I'm increasingly reminded of the similar stories on the Columbia and 9/11. Information that could have been acted on to avert disaster was discounted because it didn't fit the expectations and policies of multiple layers of bureaucracy, which have directed most of their talent toward self-preservation in increasingly strained circumstances. Knowledge-based services like research, intelligence, flying space fleets, or regulating power grids, will atrophy if they are treated like commodities. Effective expertise, trust, and resistance to political interference are incompatible with yearly budgetary crises, political micromanagement, and untestable “invisible hand” fantasies. Good services seem very expensive until we experience the effects of their failure. In contrast to widget production, their productivity grows slowly because the problems they are supposed handle never repeat exactly (Education and health care are other obvious examples). As a result, knowledge services seem to be getting proportionately more expensive than widgets. The relative cheapness of widgets encourages us to depend more and more on them, forgetting that their very complexity and power demands more rather than less monitoring. 6:46:17 PM