Overcomplicated
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Brookline, Mass., 101
Brooks, David, 155
Brooks, Frederick P., Jr., 38, 59, 93
bugs, in software, see software bugs
bureaucracies, growth of, 41
cabinets of curiosities (wunderkammers), 87–88, 140
calendar application, programming of, 51–53
Cambridge, Mass., 101
cancer, 126
Carew, Diana, 46
catastrophes, interactions in, 126
Challenger disaster, 9, 11, 12, 192
Chandra, Vikram, 77
Chaos Monkey, 107, 126
Chekhov, Anton, 129
Chekhov’s Gun, 129
chess, 84
Chiang, Ted, 230
clickstream, 141–42
Clock of the Long Now, The (Brand), 39–40
clouds, 147
Code of Federal Regulations, 41
cognitive processing:
of language, 73–74
limitations on, 75–76, 210
nonlinear systems and, 78–79
outliers in, 76–77
working memory and, 74
see also comprehension, human
collaboration, specialization and, 91–92
Commodore VIC-20 computer, 160–61
complexity, complex systems:
acceptance of, see biological thinking
accretion in, 36–43, 51, 62, 65, 191
aesthetics of, 148–49, 156–57
biological systems and, 116–17, 122
buoys as examples of, 14–15, 17
complication vs., 13–15
connectivity in, 14–15
debugging of, 103–4
edge cases in, 53–62, 65, 201, 205
feedback and, 79, 141–45
Gall on, 157–58, 227
hierarchies in, 27, 50–51
human interaction with, 163
infrastructure and, 100–101
inherent vs. accidental, 189
interaction in, 36, 43–51, 62, 65, 146
interconnectivity of, see interconnectivity
interpreters of, 166–67, 229
kluges as inevitable in, 34–36, 62–66, 127
in legal systems, 85
and limits of human comprehension, 1–7, 13, 16–17, 66, 92–93
“losing the bubble” and, 70–71, 85
meaning of terms, 13–20
in natural world, 107–10
scientific models as means of understanding, 165–67
specialization and, 85–93
unexpected behavior in, 27, 93, 96–97, 98–99, 192
see also diversity; technological complexity
complexity science, 132–38, 160
complication, complexity vs., 13–15
comprehension, human:
educability of, 17–18
mystery and, 173–74
overoptimistic view of, 12–13, 152–53, 156
wonder and, 172
see also cognitive processing
comprehension, human, limits of, 67, 212
complex systems and, 1–7, 13, 16–17, 66, 92–93
humility as response to, 155–56
interconnectivity and, 78–79
kluges and, 42
legal system and, 22
limitative theorems and, 175
“losing the bubble” in, 70–71, 85
Maimonides on, 152
stock market systems and, 26–27
technological complexity and, 18–29, 69–70, 80–81, 153–54, 169–70, 175–76
unexpected behavior and, 18–22, 96–97, 98
“Computational Biology” (Doyle), 222
computational linguistics, 54–57
computers, computing:
complexity of, 3
evolutionary, 82–84, 213
impact on technology of, 3
see also programmers, programming; software
concealed electronic complexity, 164
Congress, U.S., 34
Constitution, U.S., 33–34
construction, cost of, 48–50
Cope, David, 168–69, 229–30
corpus, in linguistics, 55–56
counting:
cognitive limits on, 75
human vs. computer, 69–70, 97, 209
Cowen, Tyler, 84
Cryptonomicon (Stephenson), 128–29
“Crystalline Structure of Legal Thought, The” (Balkin), 60–61
Curiosity (Ball), 87–88
Dabbler badge, 144–45
dark code, 21–22
Darwin, Charles, 115, 221, 227
Daston, Lorraine, 140–41
data scientists, 143
datasets, massive, 81–82, 104–5, 143
debugging, 103–4
Deep Blue, 84
diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA), 134–35
digital mapping systems, 5, 49, 51
Dijkstra, Edsger, 3, 50–51, 155
“Divers Instances of Peculiarities of Nature, Both in Men and Brutes” (Fairfax), 111–12
diversity, 113–14, 115
see also complexity, complex systems
DNA, see genomes
Doyle, John, 222
Dreyfus, Hubert, 173
dwarfism, 120
Dyson, Freeman, on unity vs. diversity, 114
Dyson, George, 110
Economist, 41
edge cases, 53–62, 65, 116, 128, 141, 201, 205, 207
unexpected behavior and, 99–100
see also outliers
Einstein, Albert, 114
Eisen, Michael, 61
email, evolution of, 32–33
emergence, in complex systems, 27
encryption software, bugs in, 97–98
Enlightenment, 23
Entanglement, Age of, 23–29, 71, 92, 96, 97, 165, 173, 175, 176
symptoms of, 100–102
Environmental Protection Agency, 41
evolution:
aesthetics and, 119
of biological systems, 117–20, 122
of genomes, 118, 156
of technological complexity, 127, 137–38
evolutionary computation, 82–84, 213
exceptions, see edge cases; outliers
Facebook, 98, 189
failure, cost of, 48–50
Fairfax, Nathanael, 111–12, 113, 140
fear, as response to technological complexity, 5, 7, 154–55, 156, 165
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Y2K bug and, 37
feedback, 14–15, 79, 135
Felsenstein, Lee, 21
Fermi, Enrico, 109
Feynman, Richard, 9, 11
field biologists, 122
for complex technologies, 123, 126, 127, 132
financial sector:
interaction in, 126
interconnectivity of, 62, 64
see also stock market systems
Firthian linguistics, 206
Flash Crash (2010), 25
Fleming, Alexander, 124
Flood, Mark, 61, 85
Foote, Brian, 201
Fortran, 39
fractals, 60, 61, 136
Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, 89
fruit flies, 109–10
“Funes the Memorious” (Borges), 76–77, 131
Galaga, bug in, 95–96, 97, 216–17
Gall, John, 157–58, 167, 227
game theory, 210
garden path sentences, 74–75
generalists, 93
combination of phys
ics and biological thinking in, 142–43, 146
education of, 144, 145
explosion of knowledge and, 142–49
specialists and, 146
as T-shaped individuals, 143–44, 146
see also Renaissance man
generalization, in biological thinking, 131–32
genomes, 109, 128
accretion in, 156
evolution of, 118, 156
legacy code (junk) in, 118, 119–20, 222
mutations in, 120
RNAi and, 123–24
Gibson, William, 176
Gingold, Chaim, 162–63
Girl Scouts, 144–45
glitches, see unexpected behavior
Gmail, crash of, 103
Gödel, Kurt, 175
“good enough,” 27, 42, 118, 119
Goodenough, Oliver, 61, 85
Google, 32, 59, 98, 104–5
data centers of, 81–82, 103, 189
Google Docs, 32
Google Maps, 205
Google Translate, 57
GOTO command, 44–45, 81
grammar, 54, 57–58
gravitation, Newton’s law of, 113
greeblies, 130–31
Greek philosophy, 138–40, 151
Gresham College, 89
Guide of the Perplexed, The (Maimonides), 151
Haldane, J. B. S., 153
hapax legomena, 54–55, 128, 206
Harold and the Purple Crayon (Johnson), 162
Harvard, John, 90
Heartbleed vulnerability, 97–98
Heaven, Douglas, 82
heavy-tailed distributions, 55–56, 133, 206
hierarchies, 27, 50–51
highly optimized tolerance, 99, 120
Hild (Griffith), 145–46
Hillis, Danny, 23
Hölzle, Urs, 217
Holzmann, Gerard, 21–22
Homer, 129–30
Homer-Dixon, Thomas, 2, 12, 70
Horner, Jack, 79–80, 97
Howard, Luke, 148
Howard, Philip K., 22, 46
HTML, 32
humility:
as response to limits of human comprehension, 155–56
as response to technological complexity, 155–56, 158, 165, 167, 170, 174, 176
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 113, 114
HyperCard, 162–63
IBM, 84, 169
IBM 3083 computer, 37
ideas, interconnectivity of, 142
if-then statements, 80–81
Iliad (Homer), 129–30
infield fly rule, 172
infrastructure, 66
accretion in, 42, 100–101
complexity of, 100–101
interconnection of, 2
interconnection of natural world and, 3–4
of Internet, 101–2
replacement of, 46
Ingenuity Gap, The (Homer-Dixon), 2
interaction, 65
in cancer, 126
in catastrophes, 126
in complex systems, 36, 43–51, 62, 65, 146
in financial sector, 126
in legal system, 45–46
of modules, 64
in software, 44–45
interconnectivity, 2, 14–15, 45–46, 103, 128, 135, 146
in financial sector, 24–26, 62, 64
ideas and, 142
and limits of human comprehension, 78–79
modules in, 63–65, 208
in technological complexity, 2, 47–48
unexpected behavior of, see unexpected behavior
Internal Revenue Service, 37–38
Internet, 47, 66
evolving function of, 31–32
physical infrastructure of, 101–2
interoperability, 47–48
optimal vs. maximum, 62–63, 64–65
interpreters, of complex systems, 166–67, 229
Ionia, 138–39
iPad, 162
Jeopardy! (TV show), 142, 169
Jobs, Steve, 161
Jones, Benjamin, 90
July 8, 2015, system crashes on, 1, 4
Kant Generator, 74
Kasparov, Garry, 84
Katsuyama, Brad, 189
Kelly, Kevin, 83
Kelly, Sean Dorrance, 173
Kircher, Athanasius, 86
Kirk, Chris, 32–33
kluges:
in biological systems, 119
definition of, 33
“good enough” in, 42
as inevitable in complex systems, 34–36, 62–66, 127, 128, 154, 173–74
in legal system, 33–34
and limits of human comprehension, 42
in software, 35
knowledge:
burden of, 90, 212
explosion of, 86–88, 89–91, 142–43
generalists and, 142–49
limits to, 153–54
Renaissance man and, 86–89, 93, 144
specialization and, 85–86, 90–91
Knowledge, The, 78
Koopman, Philip, 10, 100, 201
kosmos, 139–40
language:
cognitive processing of, 73–74
grammar in, 54, 57–58
hapax legomena in, 54–55, 206
machine translation and, 57–58, 207
power laws in, 55–56
recursion in, 71–72, 75
legacy code, legacy systems, 43, 223
accretion and, 39–40, 198–99
in biological systems, 118, 119–20
inducing new functions from, 126, 198
trauma of replacing, 39–42
legal system:
accretion in, 40–41, 46
complexity in, 16, 85
edge cases in, 59–61
interaction in, 45–46
kluges in, 33–34
limits of comprehension and, 22
Leibniz, Gottfried, 89
Leidy, Joseph, 86
Lewis, Michael, 189
liberal arts, 145
Library of Congress, 90
limitative theorems, 175
Linus’s law, 102
logic, computer vs. human, 82–84
logistics, 84
London, cabdrivers in, 78
long-tailed distributions, 55–56, 206
“losing the bubble,” 70–71, 85
Lovecraft, H. P., 40
machine translation, 57–59, 207
Macintosh computers, 161–63
magic crayons, 162–63
Maimonides, Moses, 151–52, 156
Mandel, Michael, 46
Mandelbrot, Benoit, 130
mathematics, limitative theorems in, 175
Mauries, Patrick, 87–88
Maxwell, James Clerk, 114–15
medicine, specialization in, 91
memory, human, long-term, 74–77
microbes, synthetic, 49
Microsoft, 106–7
Microsoft Office, 16
Microsoft Research, 62
Microsoft Windows, 35, 98
Microsoft Word, 42
Minecraft, 132
“miscellaneous,” concept of, 108–10, 140–41, 143
models, see scientific models
modules, 63–65, 208
Moravec, Hans, 230
multitasking, 76
mutagenesis, 124–25
mutations, 109–10, 120
Myers, Brad A., 159
Myst, 162
mystery:
human comp
rehension and, 173–74
under- vs. overemphasis on, 171
wonder vs., 170–76
Mythical Man-Month, The (Brooks), 38
naches:
definition of, 167–68
as response to technological complexity, 168–69, 174
natural world:
complexity in, 107–10
diversity of, 113–14
interconnection of technology and, 3
scientific study of, 107–10
search for unity in, see physics thinking
Netflix, 5, 59, 107, 126
Newark, N.J., 46
Newton, Isaac, 89, 112, 114, 152, 221
New York Stock Exchange, 1, 187
Niagara Falls Museum, 88
nonlinear systems, 78–79
Norman, Don, 158–59, 172
Northeast Blackout (2003), 48, 128
Norton, Quinn, 22
Norvig, Peter, 56
“novelty detection,” 127
nuclear power plants, 126
Oremus, Will, 189
outliers, 76–77, 137
see also edge cases
Out of Control (Kelly), 83
overclocking, 76
Oxford English Dictionary, 55
Pac-Man, 160
Parkinson’s Law, 41
particle accelerators, 2
pattern-making mind, 146–47
penicillin, 124
percolation, 133–34
personbyte, 212
pharmaceutical research, 125
Philosophical Transactions, 111
philosophy of technology, 79–81
Photoshop, 35
physical systems, biological systems vs., 116–17
physics thinking, 112–13, 121
abstraction in, 115–16, 121–22, 128
aesthetics and, 113, 114
in ancient Greece, 138–40
biological thinking vs., 114–16, 137–38, 142–43, 222
technological complexity and, 122, 127–28
unity in, 117
Pinker, Steven, 73
poliovirus, 49
polymaths, 86–89, 93, 144
Post, David, 61
Postal Service, U.S., 34
posterior hippocampus, 78
power grid, cascading blackouts in, 47–48, 128
power laws, 55–56, 206
pre-Socratics, 138–40
programmers, programming:
computer vs. human counting in, 69–70, 209
differences of scale and, 50–51
languages in, 23
lessons from, 160–63
recursion and, 71
as valuable skill, 43
see also software
Programming Pearls, 104–5
progress, overoptimistic view of, 12–13
progress bars, 159–60
Progressive Policy Institute, 46
Ptak, John, 147–48
Quabbin Reservoir, 101
radiation machines, overdose failures of, 67–69
radical novelty, 3, 50
railroads, 2