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    Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension
    Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension
    Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension
    Audiobook4 hours

    Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension

    Written by Samuel Arbesman

    Narrated by Sean Pratt

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Why did the New York Stock Exchange suspend trading without warning on July 8, 2015? Why did certain Toyota vehicles accelerate uncontrollably against the will of their drivers? Why does the programming inside our airplanes occasionally surprise its creators?
    After a thorough analysis by the top experts, the answers still elude us.
    You don't understand the software running your car or your iPhone. But here's a secret: neither do the geniuses at Apple or the Ph.D.'s at Toyota-not perfectly, anyway. No one, not lawyers, doctors, accountants, or policy makers, fully grasps the rules governing your tax return, your retirement account, or your hospital's medical machinery. The same technological advances that have simplified our lives have made the systems governing our lives incomprehensible, unpredictable, and overcomplicated.
    In Overcomplicated, complexity scientist Samuel Arbesman offers a fresh, insightful field guide to living with complex technologies that defy human comprehension. As technology grows more complex, Arbesman argues, its behavior mimics the vagaries of the natural world more than it conforms to a mathematical model. If we are to survive and thrive in this new age, we must abandon our need for governing principles and rules and accept the chaos. By embracing and observing the freak accidents and flukes that disrupt our lives, we can gain valuable clues about how our algorithms really work. What's more, we will become better thinkers, scientists, and innovators as a result.
    Lucid and energizing, this audiobook is a vital new analysis of the world heralded as "modern" for anyone who wants to live wisely.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateAug 1, 2016
    ISBN9781469064208
    Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension

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    Reviews for Overcomplicated

    3.5/5

    18 ratings2 reviews

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    • 3/5
      We no longer live in an age in which an educated person can basically understand the issues facing us across the range of issues, according to the best available science/learning in each area. Also, things like the tax code are fractal in their complexity; each rule usually has a decent enough reason behind it, but together they make a system that is almost unworkably difficult to navigate. That’s bad enough for the tax code, but when that same thing happens to the electrical grid, we become extremely vulnerable. And we can’t just throw out the installed base and start again, because that’s not just expensive but would require us to be without power for as long as it took to build the new, simpler system, which would eventually get complexified too. What to do? Arbesman has some suggestions about how to think about complexity by way of computer science, but no easy solutions.
    • 4/5
      Complexity is . . . complex. Arbesman uses this short book to try and untangle it a little and he mostly succeeds. Want to know why you can't understand the tax code? Why your computer always crashes as the most inopportune times? Arbesman's the guy for you.He stumbles a little near the end - when he advocates for more generalists, my heart screams yes, but my head says "Try putting that on a resume." I can't see it anytime soon, is what I'm saying. My review is based on an advance uncorrected proof.