It is only through disruptions and confusion that we grow, jarred out of ourselves by the collision of someone else's private world with our own.
Back in 2011, when the weekend maintenance disruptions got more aggressive, we were told that the work on weekends and at night and midday would be enough to get the system back to a state of good repair.
In modern states, the citizen is politically impotent. A citizen, it is true, may complain, make suggestions, or cause disruptions, but in the ancient world these were privileges that belonged to any slave.
How do we address network neutrality when the whole world is connected? How do we ensure governments don't purloin this for political purposes? It's already happening. Look at Russia on the American election. How do we protect data security when everyone's connected? Look what happened with the ransomware. How do we deal with cybercrime and cyberterrorism and the disruptions of the system? And we're seeing this every week now.
We can reduce the effect of future disruptions by reducing our dependence on oil, not putting up more rigs and drilling our special places. The fact is, we cannot drill our way to oil independence.
If Trump were to go ahead with a renewed policy of hostility toward Iran, it would immediately raise tensions, and could quickly escalate in the direction of war, with grave dangers of producing another Syrian tragedy of massive displacement and prolonged strife that could cause turmoil and disruptions throughout the entire region, and give rise to a new cycle of extremism.
