Are we too connected?

Remember those old gas hot-water boilers with a constantly burning pilot light? My house used to have one, which was not only wasteful, but a pain because the pilot light kept going out.

A new boiler with automatic ignition seemed like a huge improvement – until we had a series of power cuts one winter and found ourselves without heating or hot water. The old boiler needed only gas to work; the new one needs electricity as well. During those power cuts I realised that, unlike older ones, our telephone depends on mains electricity as well.

Why should you care? Because this anecdote epitomises what is happening on a much larger scale. Our systems are becoming ever more tightly interlinked and interdependent. That’s fine until something goes wrong: like a bird flu pandemic perhaps.

… Could our modern, global civilisation survive the loss of many of its citizens? How many staff can oil refineries lose before they are forced to halt production, for instance?

New Scientist