“A series of system crashes affecting Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft
in the past fortnight has brought warnings that governments, banks and big
business are over-reliant on computer networks that have become too complex”.
The reporting has conveyed an unmistakable feeling that ‘the
sky is falling’ on these complex internet traders.
"The
complexity of the systems created to support big data is beyond the
understanding of a single person and they also fail in ways that are beyond the
comprehension of a single person."
The idea that we may have created Frankenstein systems
that are more complex than we know how to deal with is, indeed, a little scary. But human frailty explains only a limited
part of the recent malfunctions. Again, from The Guardian:
“While a malicious attack [on the New York Times] was initially suspected,
the problem was caused simply by a scheduled system maintenance… On the same
day, Microsoft customers began to report email failures. The outage was traced
to problems with the Exchange ActiveSync service which serves email to many of
the world's smartphones…”.
The problem of man’s inability to manage the complexity of his own data constructs, such as high
volume securities trading, is ultimately a matter for mathematicians - and
maybe even philosophers. But the robustness
of data networks, the so-called ‘dumb pipes’ of internet commerce, is a matter
that ordinary mortals can and should address.
Sadly, however, both government and industry have paid insufficient
attention to the issue of communications infrastructure
policy. Establishing a suitable policy for the UK is not only
important for economic growth but, equally, to guard against the economic harm
that can be – and now is being - caused by disruptions to that infrastructure.
