There’s something rather peculiar about the direction we’ve taken with technology. We have more computing power, more connectivity, more automation, and more supposedly intelligent systems than ever before, yet somehow we seem to have become increasingly dependent on a handful of corporations and institutions to keep the most basic aspects of everyday life functioning. At what point did convenience become dependency, and when did we collectively decide that handing over control was an acceptable price for modernization? A few recent developments provide an interesting opportunity to examine that question.
A Single Point of Failure: Convenience, Control, and the Cost of Dependency
The Fragility of a Connected World
