Donald Norman wrote a think piece in the
July 19, 1996 issue of the Risks Form (comp.risks).
He leads off with

	"I am alternately amused and terrified by the ever-
	increasing complexity of everyday life.  Technology 
	provides more and more functions essential to our
	life. More and more artifacts pervade our lives and
	make themselves essential to our lifestyles.  Many
	of the new technologies involve communication
	networks that interconnect large numbers of systems. 
	These lead to an increase in the complexity of
	societal interactions and the sheer number of
	contacts among people. As a result, the number of 
	potential weak points increase, and thereby the
	dangers."
There's not much new in the rest of the article, but
Norman does take a lot of what we already know, and
wraps it together into a thoughtful piece.

	* ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks/risks-18.26

Given recent problems with the West Coast power grid,
AOL outages, and intermittent domain name server
corruption on the internet, Norman's article is timely.

-- DaveSmith (8/28/96)