Sleepy-Head

…some of my colleagues insisted that I replace the incendiary “consciousness” with the more neutral “attention” because the two concepts could not be distinguished and were probably the same thing anyway. Two decades later a number of experiments prove that the two are not the same.

For complex socio-technical systems (web engineering and operations) there is a myth that deserves to be busted, and that is the assumption that for outages and accidents, there is a single unifying event that triggers a chain of events that led to an outage.

This is actually a fallacy, because for complex systems:

there is no root cause.

Each of the myriad things has its merit,
expressed according to function and place.

Phenomena exist; box and lid fit.
principle responds; arrow points meet.

Hearing the words, understand the meaning;
don’t set up standards of your own.

If you don’t understand the way right before you,
how will you know the path as you walk?

Progress is not a matter of far or near,
but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way.

I respectfully urge you who study the mystery,
do not pass your days and nights in vain.