The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
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The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
1–10 of 176 posts
Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
#2O'Brien: I'm afraid to touch anything. It's all cross-circuited and patched together - I can't make head nor tails of it.
Bashir: Sounds like one of your repair jobs.
Seriously though, it seems like every form of infrastructure we rely on is held together in such a fragile manner. I hate hate to think of the chaos should there be a major Internet and physical infra failure in close proximity, time-wise.
Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
#3O'Brien: I'm afraid to touch anything. It's all cross-circuited and patched together - I can't make head nor tails of it. Bashir: Sounds like one of your repair jobs. Seriously though, it seems like every form of infrastructure we rely on is held together in such a fragile manner. I hate hate to think of the chaos should there be a major Internet and physical infra failure in close proximity, time-wise.
We have a pretty good track record keeping it running though; The Internet has never gone down!
I'd be far more concerned with agricultural logistics, though we've never starved to extinction, either.
Perhaps we've reached a point of positive no return: We can no longer cease to exist!
Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
#4Held together with spit and baling wire as it is, the fact that it mostly works proves that the overall architecture is robust.
Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
#5O'Brien: I'm afraid to touch anything. It's all cross-circuited and patched together - I can't make head nor tails of it. Bashir: Sounds like one of your repair jobs. Seriously though, it seems like every form of infrastructure we rely on is held together in such a fragile manner. I hate hate to think of the chaos should there be a major Internet and physical infra failure in close proximity, time-wise.
We have a pretty good track record keeping it running though; The Internet has never gone down! I'd be far more concerned with agricultural logistics, though we've never starved to extinction, either. Perhaps we've reached a point of positive no return: We can no longer cease to exist!
In this context it's a very important point that there isn't one Internet and there isn't one "we." Unless you strictly mean the human race has yet to go extinct due to starvation.
A lot of starvation events have of course occurred across many different nations, peoples, civilizations. Europe, as one example, was numerous times ravaged by extreme starvation events that collectively killed millions of people across the 19th and 20th centuries. I think your agriculture concerns are well placed.
The various Internets have gone down routinely for all sorts of reasons.
Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
#6It's Anti-Fragile. If it breaks all the time, everybody is highly experienced at patching together new workarounds, mechanisms for fail over are in place and regularly tested, and there's whole classes of corner case bugs that get flushed out to be stomped (or nurtured as cherished pets) instead of breeding in the dark and jumping out at you all at once.
How can the "Internet routes around failure" be trusted without testing? Everything needs regular exercise or it atrophies.
Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
#7It's Anti-Fragile. If it breaks all the time, everybody is highly experienced at patching together new workarounds, mechanisms for fail over are in place and regularly tested, and there's whole classes of corner case bugs that get flushed out to be stomped (or nurtured as cherished pets) instead of breeding in the dark and jumping out at you all at once. How can the "Internet routes around failure" be trusted without…
"The internet routes around failure" hasn't been true for a long time. It refers to the original topography which has been replaced with a hub and spoke model. Remove a few hubs and you have disabled a large portion of the internet.
Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
#8O'Brien: I'm afraid to touch anything. It's all cross-circuited and patched together - I can't make head nor tails of it. Bashir: Sounds like one of your repair jobs. Seriously though, it seems like every form of infrastructure we rely on is held together in such a fragile manner. I hate hate to think of the chaos should there be a major Internet and physical infra failure in close proximity, time-wise.
Unless you exist in a state of wild over abundance and are very conscientious, most working infrastructure is always at a state of almost-disrepair. If I operate a machine shop and I have 4 partially-stripped screwdrivers, I might get a new one, but inevitably I will use it until it is as stripped as all the rest, and I don’t dare throw away a tool that is currently even in partially working condition since I might need it later if another driver breaks. This is true of every single thing in my shop, and the end result is a system that is robust to absolute failure but prone to constantly needing to be patched up.
As far as I can tell this is a truism across all fields: farming, skilled trades, build systems, transportation infrastructure, housing…
Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
#9O'Brien: I'm afraid to touch anything. It's all cross-circuited and patched together - I can't make head nor tails of it. Bashir: Sounds like one of your repair jobs. Seriously though, it seems like every form of infrastructure we rely on is held together in such a fragile manner. I hate hate to think of the chaos should there be a major Internet and physical infra failure in close proximity, time-wise.
We have a pretty good track record keeping it running though; The Internet has never gone down! I'd be far more concerned with agricultural logistics, though we've never starved to extinction, either. Perhaps we've reached a point of positive no return: We can no longer cease to exist!
[deleted]
Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire
#10What are some other/better proposals for how to organize a world-wide network? This is one area where I have not seen many articles. But admittedly, I'm probably not looking in the right places. Any suggestions?