In Hindsight, the Future was a Mistake

Call me cranky, say I’m wearing horseshit coloured glasses, but I’m becoming more and more convinced that the invention of the Integrated Circuit was a huge mistake. Everything has a chip in it now, and pairing it with wireless or wired network access has opened up indescribable conveniences and efficiencies that are awe inspiring when I sit back and consider the progress made in my lifetime.

And I believe it was all a mistake.

(To the smartass “If it was all a mistake, why are you writing this on a computer and publishing it on the Internet?” thinkers, HA HA, you got me, now Fuck Off. The exit is over there.)

This is one of many examples where the services we rely on are in turn relying on key services that can fail

Fortinet, Shopify and more report issues after root CA certificate from Lets Encrypt expires

The details don’t really matter so much. The key experience is that “the service you want to access is unavailable.”

On a personal level, my automobile is becoming a pain in the ass to use every time I get into it. For a few days now the handy dandy internal computer has been notifying me that it is time for a service visit. Which I scheduled, so the notice worked, but I can’t get it done today, it is next week.

In the meantime, every time I start my car I have to clear two warning messages. One for the “oil service” notification and one for the “tire rotation” service notification. I KNOW! I booked an appointment!? Why do you have to remind me every. single. time. I. start. the. engine.

And then today a new message popped up. The battery in the remote keyfob is low. If that battery dies, I can’t start my car, as it is “keyless ignition.” So, every time I start my car, I have to clear three warning messages, and face the possibility that I may be stranded because the coin battery in the keyfob has worn out. If you hear of a person being taken into protective custody for insanely cursing out his vehicle in public, that person is likely to be me.

What do these two examples have in common? Conveniences layered on single points of failure. (Layered on annoyances and inconveniences)

When working on business continuity plans, the first part that has to be done is to identify all the weaknesses, where things can go wrong. Basically, the single points of failure. A really simple exercise you can do is analyze everything that you rely on to do your job. For example do you work from home? If you do, chances are you only have one work device. If your computer dies, you can’t do your job. Your internet connection may also be a single point of failure (if you can hotspot, you have a redundant option). Then we move into the fun stuff to consider. The power and other services to your home are also single points of failure. What happens if the power goes out, or the water supply breaks? Then there is the home itself. What do you do in the event of a fire? Or a short term evacuation due to a gas leak or other neighborhood catastrophe?

As that exercise shows, identifying all of the resources required for a work from home employee to succeed are extensive. And there are more layers to it than we understand. When we “unpeel the onion” we discover more and more layers. Even for something as simple as an automobile, for the want of a coin battery in the keyfob, I cannot drive my car. Even though there is nothing mechanically wrong with the car and it is fully fueled, and I am perfectly healthy and capable of driving. And I have the key in hand, I haven’t lost the key. But the battery! in the key is dead.

The digital economy has so many layers it is almost an impossible exercise to detail them all. It’s infinite layers of onion all the way down. These layers introduce complexity, but they are often all part of a single chain of dependent links where all it takes is for one link to fail, and the whole chain collapses. (Mixing metaphors here, we therefore have multiple chains of onions. Odd way to put it, but it’s an apt mixed metaphor.)

As the Internet of Things (or the Internet of Shit) continues to penetrate into every aspect of the economy, we wind up linking use of and access to the things we rely on to increasingly longer chains of dependent links (of onions.) And sometimes multiple chains of dependent links at the same time.

For example, buying a printer in one country, and then being unable to use it because you are prevented from buying ink for it. Even though ink is available. Printers can be region locked. The requirement for this poor soul is that when buying a printer in The Netherlands, he must stay in The Netherlands to use it. The country he lives in, is a single point of failure. (For the pedants, that is a resource constraint. Regardless of how you label the issue, he can’t print.)

From right to repair issues, to the aforementioned expiring security certificates issue to outright denial of service attacks every link in those chains are at risk. At any moment, the whole damned system is one moment away from complete collapse.

The supreme irony? Our modern economy has so accelerated resource use and waste, that we are staring imminent climate catastrophe in the face. Our planet is our largest single point of failure that we cannot do without, and we’re doing our damnedest to make it unlivable.

In Hindsight, the Future was a Mistake. Many, many mistakes. It’s mistakes all the way down. And we are going to pay for them.