The non-survival of the fattest

[TOM Merilahti]

Robust, adaptable, flexible, fast

Underwater, a frustrated marlin eyes a huge metallic swirling, darting mass of sardines. It's lunchtime. The marlin is seething because picking off a plate of sushi from the conveyor belt of a bunch of mobile low-lifes is proving amazingly tricky. 5 000 pairs of eyes are better than one. And 5 000 escape strategies (choose any two) are faster to react than one hungry marlin.

The marlin will get a sardine eventually, and the silver neighbours of the poor sardine who cops it may slightly adapt their escape strategy in the future. But they will change their positions in the shoal and thus dilute any behavioural variation.

Designed for attrition

An SOS (Self Organising System) for loss. Squash a few ants underfoot, pick off a bird or let the marlin have lunch - it doesn't make much difference. The system keeps right on working. Tht's a useful business system asset.

There have been a few bridges collapse because one bolt sheered. In a minimalist engineering structure designed only with a margin of safety, a minor failure can be catastrophic. It could bring the whole system down.

Object oriented software

Make your software modular and, like Linux, it's more robust. A failure in one module won't bring the whole system down.

Citation from SOS by Richard Stanley