Complexity Of Everyday Life

Donald Norman wrote a think piece in the July 19, 1996 issue of the Risks Form (comp.risks). He leads off with

"I am alternately amused and terrified by the ever-
increasing complexity of everyday life.  Technology 
provides more and more functions essential to our
life. More and more artifacts pervade our lives and
make themselves essential to our lifestyles.  Many
of the new technologies involve communication
networks that interconnect large numbers of systems. 
These lead to an increase in the complexity of
societal interactions and the sheer number of
contacts among people. As a result, the number of 
potential weak points increase, and thereby the
dangers."

There's not much new in the rest of the article, but Norman does take a lot of what we already know, and wraps it together into a thoughtful piece.

• ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks/risks-18.26

Given recent problems with the West Coast power grid, AOL outages, and intermittent domain name server corruption on the internet, Norman's article is timely.

-- DaveSmith (8/28/96)