JULY 20, 2024 – Yesterday we earthlings woke up to the news that a multi-billion company few of us had ever heard of was responsible for a widespread snafu affecting computer systems the world over. In dual irony the company—CrowdStrike—produces cybersecurity software. A glitch in the way updated code interacted with Microsoft Windows is what grounded thousands of flights and disrupted the plans and lives of millions of people. If you travel deeper into the story, much more has been affected by a coding error that conspiracy theorists will surely attribute to nefarious motives.
We’d planned to host at the cabin our California cousins, who were scheduled on a flight arriving in Minneapolis at noon yesterday. When I saw the leading news story first thing in the morning, I assumed that our plans would be thrown up in the air . . . or rather, not “thrown up in the air” because they’d be grounded along with the expectations of many other would-be flyers. We were sorely disappointed to hear the news, but there wasn’t a thing we could do. Our cousins weren’t about to drive.
As good luck would have it, they and their fellow passengers and crew aboard a Delta flight managed to slip out of the San Jose airport just before all hell broke loose—or more aptly put, before nothing broke loose and everyone stood still in long snaking airport queues.
We hardly need an aide-memoire . . . except . . . in our persistent culture of rugged individualism, maybe we do need a reminder of our extreme interdependence and interconnectedness. Against the massive amounts of reportage covering intentional and nefarious acts by our fellow creatures, we also need a refresher course in our omnipresent vulnerability to major systemic risks and threats that lie outside our daily tactical living and long-term strategic thinking. Some are “natural” and beyond our realistic control—a virus, an extraordinary solar flare, a shift in the earth’s axis. Some are “natural” and well within our causal control but beyond our political will, such as anthropogenic climate change. As yesterday’s computer glitch revealed, other major risks and threats are inherent within the very system that we’ve erected to reduce other major risks and threats created by that same artificial framework that governs modern life.
Speaking of reminders . . . yesterday’s computer code error and its consequences remind me of an exchange I had with my mother when she was 90. In the context of discussing some multi-step process of modern life, she threw up her hands and said, “Life these days is so complicated.” Mother was no undereducated simpleton. She’d engaged in highly complex thinking her entire life, not the least of which was during her aeronautical engineering back when she conducted stress analyses of propeller designs by performing mind-numbing calculations through her deft use of a hand-held slide rule. In retrospect and with more patience as I myself age in a world of head-spinning technological change, I understand better the source of Mother’s frustration with “modern complications”: old age.
At the time, however, I argued that if life seemed to her to be “so complicated,” it was in fact vastly simpler than the days governed by hand-held slide rules—or by countertop abacuses, as I discovered in every single shop and kiosk along my travels across Russia in 1981.
I cited the example of trans-continental travel and started off with a gentle angle of attack (“AOA”) off the runway. “For instance, Mother, take commercial aviation,” I said. “From one perspective, you’re quite correct. It has gotten extraordinarily complicated since Kitty Hawk. Consider the engineering that went into a Boeing triple 7. Every aspect of it took countless engineers working innumerable computer apps designing, testing, re-designing a gazillion components—and that’s before you examine the jet engines. Can you imagine? I can’t. And let’s not forget the avionics. Holy cow-jumping-over-the-moon—I mean how in the world or at 36,000 feet above it does all that work? Then you’ve got all the meteorological considerations and how they’re identified, assessed, communicated, and addressed. Next, you have many thousands of planes in the air at the same time, piled up in air space to and from and over every major city in the world. How does all that operate without aircraft bumping into each other—and I don’t mean avoiding each other for intervals of longer than five minutes; I mean statistically next to never? Oh, and all that is before we consider the processes required to assemble, operate, and maintain modern commercial aircraft or the capital-raising, financial-management, legal-contracting, administrative, and regulatory structures required to create and support the production and operation of thousands upon thousands of commercial airliners. The full complexity of the system is well beyond the knowledge capacity of any single living human being.
“And yet, at the same time, the commercial aviation system has simplified life beyond recognition by any of our forebears. I mean, think about it. Without leaving the comfort of our living room chairs and for a few hundred bucks, you or I or anyone else can buy a ticket. We can call for a ride to the airport—let’s pretend its LaGuardia in New York. We can waltz—well, you, Mom, might have to use your walker, but you know what I mean—we can make our way down a ramp and into a plane, take our seat, and strap ourselves in. For a handful of hours we can read a book, peer out the window, take a snooze, snack on chips, sip a drink, chat with the person next to us, or all of the above. Once back on the ground, we unbuckle ourselves, grab our bags and exit the plane. We walk outside and voila! We’re in San Francisco—opposite end of the continent.
“Now, how intoxicatingly simple is that? Versus . . .
“Not so long ago, to get from Independence, Missouri—already halfway across the continent—to the West Coast, we’d have to mount a massively complicated expedition. We’d have to team up with a bunch of other people and provision ourselves for a months’-long slog across the Great Plains, over the Rocky Mountains, and the wilderness beyond. We’d have to anticipate all kinds of dangers from rattlesnakes to death from dehydration; Indian arrows and lightning strikes; broken wagon wheels in the middle of nowhere to falling off ledges along mountain passes. And if we survived the journey, we’d have to figure out how to eke out a living once we cut down enough trees to sow a crop. What could be more complicated than all the risks and pitfalls associated with such an undertaking—and again, to get ourselves across just half of the continent?”
Mother didn’t have an answer, except to say, “I’m glad I didn’t have to live back then.”
“Exactly,” I said.
As I reflect on that conversation against the massive migraine caused by yesterday’s computer glitch, I realize that if I were suddenly plunked down in earlier times, I’d be lost and at serious risk of being an immediate loser. I’d certainly be at a loss when I pulled out my smartphone only to discover that Google Maps was worthless. Likewise, a big strappin’ early 19th century American pioneer unlucky enough to land in our times would be equally flustered if he were handed a smartphone and told, “Westward ho! And good luck!”
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
