Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension, by Samuel Arbesman

According to the blurb, Overcomplicated "offers a fresh, insightful field guide to living with complex technologies that defy human comprehension." Author Samuel Arbesman is "Scientist in Residence at Lux Capital, a science and technology venture capital firm." He begins Overcomplicated by giving many examples of how technology has gotten so complex that in many cases, no one entirely understands how certain things work. As examples he gives the 2015 crash of the New York Stock Exchange and the grounding of United Airlines planes on the same day. Computer bugs were blamed for these problems, and Arbesman uses these and other examples to show that computer code that has been developed and added to over decades may have bugs that cause significant problems over time, but which no one truly understands.

Arbesman takes the reader on a philosophical and theoretical journey. He distinguishes between the meanings of "complex" and "complicated." He explains the differences between the approaches of biology and physics to learning and discovery, and places technology in the biological realm. He discusses the difference between a sense of mystery and a sense of wonder in the face of technology. Mystery implies a sense of magic; when we don't understand how something works, it appears to be magic. Wonder, on the other hand, is the "ability to marvel and to feel a sense of the numinous in the world around us" (p. 172). He concludes with a discussion of humility, and recommends that we retain a sense of wonder and humility in the face of technology that is too complicated for us to understand.

Arbesman's goal seems to be to allay readers' fears about the ever-increasing complexity of technology today. Although this was an interesting book, in my case he didn't quite succeed. His tales of technology gone wrong and explanations that no one truly understands how things work were not reassuring. His recommendation that we accept technology's complexity with humility and a sense of wonder isn't comforting at all!

Samuel Arbesman. Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension. New York: Current/Penguin Random House, 2016. 244 pages. ISBN 9781591847762.