Last week, a transformer in the Back Bay caught on fire and transported over 20,000 NStar customers back to the 18th century for a few days. No new lessons will be learned from this incident. NStar will make some efforts to make their grid more robust, but the patchwork assembly of our civilization will remain patchwork. This is not an indictment of the current state of U.S. infrastructure, which is not as good as it should be, but rather an opportunity to reflect on how complex systems fail at unpredictable moments for a combination of reasons--some predictable, others unpredictable.
Unpredictable phenomenon are sometimes referred to as "Black Swans" and they are important as a concept because their continuing existence demonstrates that we can't control the future absolutely. An amusing paradox lies in the fact that in order to survive we must make constant efforts to plan and predict the future. All hope for positive outcomes rests on our ability to resist overreaching and to make investments in contingencies. Some contigencies will never be used, or it is hoped that they will never be used, but that doesn't make them any less valuable. I hope that I never use the airbags in my car, but I really enjoy having them--particularly since I drive in Massachusetts.
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