Media: The Complexity of Connections raised by Technology Review

"When Rebooting is Not an Option", on the Technology Review site, looks at how connections limit the control individuals have over their environment. In an Q&A session, MIT computer scientist Larry Rudolph explains why rebooting will not solve problems in the future and what must replace such - increasingly instinctive - behaviour.

This article is great: from the start with Rudolph watching a cabbie reboot his taxi, to the ominous end when the interviewer asks: 'How do you plan to simulate failures in the systems you are developing?' and Rudolph replies 'We don't have to. They just happen!'

In between, we learn that in this emerging technoscape of pervasive computing, the "turn off, turn on" solution will be of no help. Although 'it is easy to envision a nightmare scenario in which a small failure starts a chain reaction, the result being a whole menagerie of devices ringing and beeping and generally misbehaving'.

Rudolph says humans are quite good at tracing errors. 'The problem is that today's equipment doesn't give us any clue of where the problem might be. But this situation would change completely if electronic devices began to carry special systems capable of detecting anomalous behavior — and pointing out this information to the user.'

The examples he gives capture usability problems of a kind still only dreamt of: 'Future robust computer systems will likely be "fault tolerant" so that if one computer fails, the computation will automatically continue on some other computer. In that case, shutting down the main computer may not stop [the phone from ringing]. Should you reboot the living room? Or maybe the house? And if that doesn’t work, should you try rebooting the whole neighborhood?'

Read it and predict...

Associated Link: Technology Review: When Rebooting is Not an Option (one-time registration required)

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