The Default State is Broken

"The default state of technology – any technology from stone axes to modern computers – the default state of technology is 'broken'."

--Dr. Don Norman, experiential designer and founder of the Nielsen Norman Group

Technology by definition is something that is created and thus must be maintained. The axe is one of the earliest and easiest examples: axes that aren't sharp are spectacularly bad axes – there's a reason why lumberjacks have always been one of the most dangerous jobs. For a really, really long time we survived on technology and tools that were only moderately more complicated than our own fingers and teeth, and thus technology was relatively easy to maintain and manage, but still: a dull knife is a failure mode. A snapped bowstring is a failure mode. It requires time, attention, and effort to keep the technology of life out of failure mode and in a usable condition. And this is a condition that becomes more and more true as systems become more complex and civilization grows beyond the Dunbar Number.

The thing about the modern world is that it's become so complex that the average person, while entirely capable of maintaining their own technology, just doesn't have time to do it on their own. In point of fact, there's a better-than-average chance that they're out doing maintenance on someone else's technology so that person can do maintenance on someone else's technology... it's maintenance all the way down, in our society. The miracle isn't that computers make our lives easier; the miracle is that they manage to not fail on a reasonably regular basis.

An anecdote: the FAA requires that every plane that flies meet a strict policy on maintenance – the industry standard as I understand it is the "five nines", which means that 99.999% of the parts and functionality of the aircraft must be working for the aircraft to be certified as air-worthy. The average 737-800 has 2.3 million parts (moving or otherwise). That means that on every Southwest flight you take there's as many as 23 things on the plane that are broken (and this is before Boing got caught doing a crime). The good news is that they often aren't major things – a seatbelt doesn't lock, a cabin compartment doesn't latch, etc. – but again, the miracle isn't that planes fly, but rather that planes don't fall out of the sky on a regular basis.

The difference between older, more "reliable" technology and the new experience of the Internet Of Things and our Software-based interface with the world is that most older technology has had the edges shaved down and sanded off. By default, these systems have been redesigned and redesigned until the technology persists in a system where the failure mode is understandable and easy to manage (though sometimes the timing of that failure mode is less-than-ideal – witness anyone who's had a car run out of gas between mileposts on the freeway).

Much of surviving the modern world involves planning for Failure Modes – how does it fail, why does it fail, what happens to me / you / y'all / involved systems when it fails – and working to determine risk matrices for a given situation and the likelihood of impact. Often the most important question a person can ask is "how does it fail," because many tools and businesses are extremely focused on delivery modes and success, and it's left to the individual to make sure that failure is a mode that can be survived.

Another Anecdote: Disaster Recovery methodology is a very-low-reward value. Often thinking about DR is boring and weird, because it often involves situations that just plain don't happen...until they do. The DR plan for, say, a volcanic eruption is not something the average person thinks about. But when it happens it becomes really valuable to have that white binder with the carefully-laid-out plans for what happens next. And it can be both expensive and panic-inducing when it turns out the white binder is empty / out of date.

Technology always, always breaks. Sometimes it breaks in extremely predictable ways, and sometimes it breaks in ways that are not only impossible to predict but sometimes nearly-impossible to replicate (want to have fun? Google "Leap Second Bug" and head down that particular Wikipedia rabbit hole). But most people don't think about different types of failure modes; they have a mindset that all tools are either "working" or "not working". And it's important to think about that. And to recognize that the default state of modern civilization and life is much more often "broken".