An acclaimed theorist offers a provocative and chilling warning: todayâs advanced societies have grown overcomplex and highly vulnerable to extreme events that could topple civilization
The modern industrialized world is a complex system on a scale never before witnessed in the history of humankind. Technologically dependent, globally interconnected, it offers seemingly limitless conveniences, choices, and opportunities. Yet this same modern civilization may be as unstable as a house of cards, fear complexity scientists like John Casti. All it would take to "downsize" our way of lifeâto send us crashing back to the nineteenth centuryâis a nudge from what Casti calls an "X-event," an unpredictable occurrence with extreme, even dire, consequences. When an X-event strikesâand scientists believe it willâfinance, communication, defense, and travel will stop dead in their tracks. The flow of food, electricity, medicine, and clean water will be disrupted for months, if not years. What will you do?
A renowned systems theorist, Casti shows how our world has become impossibly complicated, relying on ever more advanced technology that is developing at an exponential rate. Yet it is a fact of mathematical life that higher and higher levels of complexity lead to systems that are increasingly fragile and susceptible to sudden, spectacular collapse. Fascinating and chilling, X-Events provides a provocative tour of the catastrophic outlier scenarios that could quickly send us crashing back to the preindustrial age: global financial "black swans"; a worldwide crash of the Internet that would halt all communication; the end of oil; nuclear winter; "nanoplagues"; robot uprisings; electromagnetic pulses; pandemic viruses; and more. You won't ever look at the world the same way again.
Categories:
- Medical Books
- Basic Sciences
- Virology
- Basic Sciences
Publisher : William Morrow
Author : Casti, John L.
Language : English
Published :2012-06-12
Number Of Pages : 326
Binding : hardcover
ISBN-10 : 0062088289
ISBN-13 : 9780062088284
Item weight : 1.1 lb
Dimensions : 1.2 in x 6 in x 9.1 in
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