Technology Review has a great article about complex, interconnected systems and the risks associated with them. I suspect that this is a teaser for the authors’ new book on the subject, which ought to make for interesting reading.

Making highly interconnected systems robust is not a trivial problem, but the early pioneers of information theory developed some pretty good ways to ensure fidelity over networks. It makes sense to me that this work would be the basis of increasing robustness in modern systems. All redundancy comes with a cost, however, and it will likely be insurance companies that will lead the way in placing a value on robustness.