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Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies: Difference between revisions
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{{a|devil|}}This is one of those “books that will change your life”. Well — that ''should'' change lives — that it was written in 1984 — {{author|Charles Perrow}} passed away in 2019 — suggests that, maybe it hasn’t: that the irrationalities that motivate so much of what we do are more pervasive than plainly written common sense. | {{a|devil| | ||
[[File:Erebus.gif|450px|thumb|center|Air New Zealand Flight TE901]] | |||
}}This is one of those “books that will change your life”. Well — that ''should'' change lives — that it was written in 1984 — {{author|Charles Perrow}} passed away in 2019 — suggests that, maybe it hasn’t: that the irrationalities that motivate so much of what we do are more pervasive than plainly written common sense. | |||
{{author|Charles Perrow}} was a sociologist who fell into the discipline of [[systems analysis]]: analysing how social structures like businesses, governments and public utilities, being loose networks of autonomous individuals, work. Perrow’s focus fell upon organisations that present specific risks to operators, passengers, innocent bystanders — nuclear and other power stations, airways, shipping lines, but the read-across to the financial systems is obvious — where a combination of [[complexity]] and [[tight coupling]] mean that periodic catastrophic accidents are not just likely, but ''inevitable''. It is the intrinsic property of a complex, tightly coupled system — not merely a function of operator error that can be blamed on a negligent employee — that it will fail catastrophically. | {{author|Charles Perrow}} was a sociologist who fell into the discipline of [[systems analysis]]: analysing how social structures like businesses, governments and public utilities, being loose networks of autonomous individuals, work. Perrow’s focus fell upon organisations that present specific risks to operators, passengers, innocent bystanders — nuclear and other power stations, airways, shipping lines, but the read-across to the financial systems is obvious — where a combination of [[complexity]] and [[tight coupling]] mean that periodic catastrophic accidents are not just likely, but ''inevitable''. It is the intrinsic property of a complex, tightly coupled system — not merely a function of operator error that can be blamed on a negligent employee — that it will fail catastrophically. | ||