Paul Gillmor Quotes

Complex systems work until the day that they don’t work.

For something to collapse, not all systems have to shut down. In most cases, just one system is enough. For example, the human body is a system of systems. If just one system, such as the cardiovascular system, shuts down, death follows.

The American people should be made aware of the trend toward monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands.

Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities.

Several highly improbable and therefore unforeseen failures.

We have a major crisis in the system. the Preisdent is so powerful that he overehelms the rest of the Government. .... This has been going on for over 50 years. Each president adds more and more power.... Congress is crippled and cowardly .... They don't use their appropriations power. They have been passing continuing resultions for 20 years.

I believe that if you are talking about economic stress, the systems of the world are very fragile, and if we put our hope and trust in the systems that men have created, they will guarantee failure.

For thousands of years, until about 1850, you see humans accumulating more and more power by the invention of new technologies and by new systems of organization in the economy and in politics, but you don't see any real improvement in the well-being of the average person.

My experience with Epic is handing off more and more power to the point where I can just sit back and look at our strategy or technology. I provide guidance without being responsible for any particular part of the company.

Power might feel tasty and good in the moment, but it will never be satisfying, never fill you up. Yep, no matter how much power you get, you will always feel empty. You just keep wanting more and more power.

The technical stuff does matter. It gives you a bit more ownership, a bit more power to choose what you do so that if you miss one, you can try to figure out a way, and that makes the next kick really exciting because it means you've got to commit everything to it.

More visibility is more power, but more vulnerability.

Any system that is deprived of its natural volatility, with government up (unintelligible) volatile, any system becomes very fragile.

A rough rule in life is that an organization foolish in one way in dealing with a complex system is all too likely to be foolish in another.

Economic systems come, and economic systems go. No economic system lasts forever. Capitalism is not likely to last forever, either.

It is a mistake to assume that if everybody does his job, it will be all right. The whole system may be in trouble.

The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change, will collapse first.

Ironically, the universities have trained hundreds of thousands of graduates for jobs that soon will not exist. They have trained people to maintain a structure that cannot be maintained. The elite...know only how to feed the beast until it dies. Once it is dead, they will be helpless. Don't expect them to save us. They don't know how....and when it all collapses, when our rotten financial system with its trillions in worthless assets implodes and our imperial wars end in humiliation and defeat, the power elite will be exposed as being as helpless, and as self-deluded as the rest of us

My nightmare scenario is that the government saves Citibank once again, as well as the other banks, and business resumes as usual. Then, the next time the system breaks, it breaks much, much bigger.

The information bomb gives rise to the integral and globally constituted accident.

If all individuals were conditioned to machine efficiency in the performance of their duties there would have to be at least one person outside the machine to give the necessary orders; if the machine absorbed or eliminated all those outside the machine, the machine will slow down and stop forever.

A system, artificially stabilized, and of course you have hidden risks under the surface, and you don't know where the risks are.

Information is antifragile; it feeds more on attempts to harm it than it does on efforts to promote it.

A program designed for inputs from people is usually stressed beyond breaking point by computer-generated inputs.

If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.