Just made this one from an idea I had an hour ago on a walk.
Posted on 08/26/2013 6:20:36 AM PDT by Travis McGee
ever bit into a green persimmon?
BFLR
The key to a lot of this, besides low power, is modularity of the components (e.g. USB connected) plus low price so you can carry a bunch of spares. Another key is that everything is all defined and run from software so it can be reprogrammed. One advantage is this gives you someone to talk to besides Roger and Lisa.
“ever bit into a green persimmon?”
Not in a very long time.
ping
Your novel "Foreign Enemies and Traitors" is a great read and relevant to what is happening. BTW, it made a list of "Top 10 Dystopian Novels" (ink below, November 2013 blog)
ink=link
Just made this one from an idea I had an hour ago on a walk.
Well done!
Well done. Definite food for thought.I will pass it along.
Excellent short story. It has a number of great quotes such as: “. . . it is much harder to build and sustain a stable and functioning civilization (even an admittedly imperfect one) than it is to destroy a pretty damn good civilization in the name of establishing utopian perfection by government degree.”
Bkmk for later.
Thank you for writing and posting this. I just read Alas Babylon again for the second time since high school. Still a pretty good read.
I think you are right on target with an unspecified network / communication disruption as the catalyst to a major upheaval. In my current adventure driving a truck for a large national carrier, I had the interesting opportunity to observe first-hand the impact of a network error on trucking - one of the largest truck stop chains suffered a "computer problem" that prevented them from processing payments for fuel (a chain-wide error, not just a localized one.) For drivers on national accounts, the staff would manually collect our payment information for later submission, since they expected the problem to be resolved quickly and had every expectation that they would be paid for the fuel. Everyone else seemed to be cash-only or out of luck. Lines at the fuel islands were long, and the lines at the register were even longer. A process that usually takes me less than fifteen minutes to complete went more than an hour that day, and I was still one of the lucky ones.
It is not hard at all to imagine how quickly our commercial transportation system would grind to a halt if that same scenario were expanded to the top three or four chains at the same time or, even worse, a specifically-targeted attack (denial-of-service or network hack) on a company like EFS, a major fuel-card payment company. No fuel - No trucks. As you mentioned in terms of just-in-time delivery, one small disruption in the system can domino into a major catastrophe. Much of what I deliver is not a consumer product at all, but is merely one small element needed to keep a plant running. However, if that delivery does not arrive in time, the entire production line is at risk of shutting down. Your story is an excellent reminder that "just-in-time" is remarkably similar to "hanging-by-a-thread", which seems to be an apt description of the thin veneer of civility that lightly covers American society.
Thanks for all of your work!
Thank you, you get my points. Backwoods Engineer added the increasing amplitude wave “Tacoma Narrows Bridge” analogy today. I think we can see the stress points.
I was hooked in the first sentence and read on ‘til the end. Excellent work.
I sure hope nothing like that ever comes to pass.
A collapse 73 years ago, and another one coming.
http://www.backwoodsengineer.com/2013/11/a-collapse-73-years-ago-and-another-one.html
Tacoma Narrows Bridge failure, an analogy concerning an increasing amplitude feedback loop.
It is on us to prevent or forestall such a thing. Part of our effort should include good, old-fashioned prayer.
Amen.
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