Listening Post: Inextricable

In a sci-fi horror movie, whenever the alien gets someone, it implants tendrils all through their body that can’t be removed without killing the host. This is also a foundational principal of modern online operations–the web is now so finely spun, that to remove a single thread tears it all to shreds.

For ncpr.org to function fully, our internal network needs to be up, NPR and NPR Digital Services needs to be up, Google services such Feedburner, Google Analytics and Youtube need to be up, as well as Facebook, and Twitter, and Flickr, and ShareThis. Our main web server needs to be up and our separate blog domain server needs to be up. Plus the main cable and telephone ISP networks need to be up, to say nothing of our radio broadcast network. Any one of these services being down can make the whole thing go away, or blow big holes in the page. It’s a wonder anything ever works.

Today we spent a good chunk of the afternoon pulling the plug on assorted Google services to make the website work in-house at NCPR. If 5 million people suddenly visit, we will never know–no analytics. But at least now I can get to the page to make this post.

A hammer has little downtime, but my car always has something wrong with it. It’s the same Rube Goldberg effect–too many inextricable systems. In new media this gets little attention. I think everyone is still too in awe of the things it does do (when everything is working).

But it’s worth keeping in mind that the first thing the aliens do when arriving to conquer Earth is to fire off a big electromagnetic pulse, frying all the modern electronic gizmos and networks that surround our lives–instantly transporting us all back to the 1950s. It was a simpler time then, when sci-fi monsters were just big radioactive bugs.

Tags: listeningpost