Failing infrastructure

I have been digging through the 27C3 recordings from time to time and one which especially caught my eye was Eleanor Saitta's talk titled "Your Infrastructure Will Kill You" (Youtube, Webm Torrent). Her argument is that infrastructure will be neglected until the point of catastrophic and costly failure. This, she concludes, is primarily due to the fact that the agents in charge of said infrastructure normally do not have any incentive to invest in it. Short term gains, through cost cutting measures are tempting if the problem only occurs years or decades after one leaves the elected office.

Photo CC-BY by reallynothing

Several months after her talk Fukushima happened. Watching the talk after this event underscores the fundamental importance of infrastructure, though it does not address the inherent problematic operation of nuclear power plants. Having only recently come across her talk I was excited to hear her perspective on this topic in regards to the recent crisis on byciclemark's excellent podcast. (Also check out his 26C3 talk and his 24c3 talk.)

Slightly unrelated but also quite interesting is her talk at The Next Hope in 2010 on Buying Privacy in Digitized Cities and others in her list of talks, recordings can be found online with some digging. Overall, she's an interesting person to follow (@dymaxion) with an unusual set of insights.