Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension

This is a well written book on an important topic. Arbesman swims against the tide of tech pundits who point to a glorious future of seamless technology which solves all our problems. He shows in detail how as technologies get more complicated they create complexity which is more and more beyond our ability to understand. We are headed to a future where bugs and glitches and crashes are inevitable and unpredictable. He says we need to look at technology like a biologist might look at an new animal species, the inner workings of which we cannot fully understand, but we need to learn to live with.

If there is a shortcoming to the book it is that I think he does not take the argument far enough. I run a cabinet shop in Toronto, and my experience is that with the advent of new technologies such as the internet, not only does the technology itself become more and more complex, but that everything becomes more complex.

Essentially what I do is cut particle board into rectangles, screw them into boxes, paint them, stand them up in people’s houses and put some doors on them. How simple is that? And yet with globalization of trade, the explosion of online information available to clients, and the market driven race to add ever expanding new features to all aspects of kitchen design and technology, my job seems to get more and more complex every day, in spite of my never ending efforts to standardize processes. Every week is some new combination of organic materials, high tech appliances, European hardware, Indian or African sculpture, high modernist design, and not uncommonly some features that defy the laws of physics. Add to that the usual budget constraints, time constraints and a list of stake holders that rivals a wedding and you get a process that is constantly pulling towards chaos. And as so many home reno show attest, kitchen renovations more often than not end in disaster.

Even if all my tech devices operate flawlessly (and they never do), I still find myself “outside the buble” on a regular basis. According to Arbesman this term is used to describe when a combat soldier becomes overwhelmed by the complexity of a situation and looses the ability to grasp what is going on around them. I found it interesting that he drew this analogy because I myself have found books on military tactics and logistics more helpful than most business books dealing with this sort of complexity. The best ones are the written by soldiers who have actually seen combat.

One of Arbesman’s suggestions that I found particularly interesting is the need for more “T” shaped thinkers. This is a person with an in depth knowledge of a particular field combined with a broad knowledge of many other fields. He suggests that every company should have some of these. My personal feeling is that everyone who wants to have a job in the future better pursue such an educational strategy.

In my own business to be a really good cabinet maker demands having an in depth knowledge of traditional cabinetry, and ability to work with computers and technology. But that is only part of the knowledge I use in a day. I am constantly forced to make complex economic trade offs, using concepts such as comparative advantage (should I sub this component out or make it myself). Cognitive science is also very useful, in assessing situations such as “can I reason with a client who is in a state of panic” (not at all uncommon). Sociology and ethnography are handy as many of my client’s decisions can only be understood in terms of complex social status relationships. And finally as a cabinet maker you need a strong background in geometry, design history and a good common sense knowledge of physics, chemistry, mechanics and electrical systems.

This is a lot for one person to learn, and in the twentieth century this issue was resolved by Fredrick Taylor by dividing up workers and managers. Workers had technical skills and did things, and managers had general knowledge and did the thinking. Workers got a technical education and managers got a university degree.

But in the twenty first century this Taylorist division of labour has become hopelessly cumbersome. With modern tools, once a decision has been made about how to solve a complex issue the technical execution is often almost instantaneous. With nail guns that can shoot hundreds of nails a minute a skilled artisan does not need a crew of hammer swingers any more. Writers and consultants don’t need typists, they just push ‘print’.

Every one I know in business says they are desperate to find workers with technical skills but who can also comprehend the big picture.
Not uncommonly these days you hear about people who get a university education and then end up going back to technical school to learn some kind of practical skill. This is often seen as some kind of failure of education. In fact, it may be the way of the future.

And a good knowledge of the science of complexity would also be strongly recommended. If you want to see how small changes in initial states lead to radically different outcomes (the butterfly effect) look no further than a construction site.

I've read a lot of books on the relationship between technology and the complex nature of life in the first decades of the 21st century. None affected me more than Overcomplicated for two main reasons.

First, while other authors get at technology per se at least as well as Arbesman does, he nails the problems growing out of it on the head from the beginning of the book on. See, for example, this statement on p. 3: "Each of our actions has more unexpected ramifications than ever before, rippling not just to every corner of our infrastructure, but to every corner of the planet, and sometimes even beyond."

Second, he is one of the few authors to view our responses to complexity as kluges, an IT term used to describe Rube Goldberg like patches that work well enough but often cover over root causes of problems. As a political scientist that's what most public policy turns out to be rather than programs that actually solve a problem once and for all. If Arbesman is right, kluges are becoming harder and harder to avoid. Alas. Think about Obamacare or dealing with violent extremism or almost any other policy dilemma.

I think so much of Arbesman's book that I'm beginning the next edition of my comparative politics textbook with the quote I used above and revolving much of it around his notions of complexity and kluges.

And he's a biologist turned complexity scientist turned venture capitalist.

Plus for not over complicating the topic. Big plus for the topic. About half-way through I would have given it 2 stars because the author repeatedly makes the same point. Read like an essay that was expanded to book length. Can't remember ever buying an essay so perhaps there is a reason for this. Saved by the suggested readings and notes which in the Kindle format do not appear even as links in the body of the text. This may be different in the print version.

Though this subject has been considered by folks before, I found Sam Arbesman's style fun and accessible, and his ability to weave together disparate ideas very convincing and enlightening. I'd recommend this book for anyone looking to better understand how fast our techie world is changing, and how some of the underpinnings are occulted from all. This only makes us need to consider the greater question, which is how are we thinking about our tech, given that not all can be understood, and how we're choosing to apply it. Those are the big questions of tomorrow, and those are the questions that require diversity of thought and ideas, not just techies building tech for tech's sake. Fascinating read!

I have mixed feelings about this book.

One one hand, I agree with much of what Arbesman has to say. The systems that are integral parts of our daily lives are immensely complicated, and have arisen from an almost biological process of evolution and accretion and that this complexity leads to unexpected failures. This is the central premise of the book, and the author spends most of the book giving examples illustrating this fact. As someone who believed this before picking up the book at all, it seemed extremely repetitive. If you work in any technological field, this should be old news.

After hammering home how complex and incomprehensible these systems are for the majority of the book, the author offers very little in the way of solutions besides philosophical musings on humility, or imploring the reader to "think like a field biologist".

Overall this book is long on observation and diagnosis as to the problems of complexity in the systems which support modern life (which are apt and largely well argued), but short on any substantive prescriptions.