"We don’t need hackers to break the systems because they’re falling apart by themselves,” said Dr. Peter Neumann in an New York Times article, "Who Needs Hackers?" discussing how IT systems are falling apart. Peter and several others discuss the increasing complexity of IT systems today, and how system design and development haven't been keeping up, often as a matter of convenience more than lack of knowledge (which I also argue in my IEEE Spectrum article on "Why Software Fails.")
Some 19 years ago to almost the day (11 September 1988), the NY Times published a story titled, "In Computer Behavior, Elements of Chaos." In this article, the late Dr. Alan Perlis postulated that the break down in networks that were occurring with greater regularity during the late 1980s, "lies in the inevitable disparity between the real world and the models used to simulate it. Even the finest computer simulation is only an approximation. At some point that cannot be determined in advance, the discrepancies between reality and the computer's simplified world view will lead to a chaotic breakdown."
"The only way we can improve our systems is to be prepared to continually redesign them when they fail - which they almost certainly will."
Some things never seem to change, eh?
