The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.
Interpretation
Complex systems can be effectively created by combining simpler, functioning components.
This quote emphasizes the importance of starting with basic elements that are well-understood and effective, as a means to construct more elaborate systems. By focusing on creating simple systems first, we can ensure that each part works independently, which ultimately contributes to the reliability and efficiency of the overall complex system.
In practice
In a tech conference discussion on software engineering, someone might share this quote to emphasize modular programming.
This is actually a very important principle that science is learning about large systems like evolution and that futurists are learning about anticipating human society: just because a future scenario is plausible doesn't mean we can get there from here.
Humans are the reproductive organs of technology.
We are now spending half a trillion dollars on foreign oil, importing 62 percent of the oil we use, and we haven't had the leadership in D.C. to do anything about it. We've got to move to other sources of energy. But we've gotten way behind, and will continue to pay the fiddler. It's not a good future.
Technology enabled Rappler's fast growth starting in 2012, but we were also among the first victims when social media was weaponized in 2016.
The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed: the major record labels let Apple take over the digital-music business; Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix for a mere fifty million dollars; Excite turned down the chance to acquire Google for less than a million dollars.
I love technology, and I love science. It's just always all in the way you use it. So there's no - you can't really blame anything on the technology. It's just the way people use it, and it always has been.
Everybody copied Atari products. So we started messing with them and it was fun. We bought enough chips that we could get them mislabeled. So we bankrupted at least two companies which copied our boards, and bought all the parts but they were the wrong parts, so they're sitting on all this inventory they can't sell because the games don't work.
In our interconnected world, novel technology could empower just one fanatic, or some weirdo with a mindset of those who now design computer viruses, to trigger some kind of disaster. Indeed, catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure - error rather than terror.
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