lil: I'm impressed by Quinn Norton's writing. I found this sentence in her article "Everything is Broken."
It’s hard to explain to regular people how much technology barely works, how much the infrastructure of our lives is held together by the IT equivalent of baling wire.
When the power goes down for long periods of time, I suspect she is right: society is built on bailing wire and toothpicks. But sometimes I feel that in many western countries, the larger infrastructure -- not "the infrastructure of our lives," but society's, is stronger than we know.Or is it?
It wasn't in 1929. It isn't in numerous countries now. Somalia comes to mind.