Comment by pdkl95 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdkl95 | Hacker News Reader

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> cars, aeroplanes or ships

While I agree that transportation is another technology trap, most of it is reasonably independent; one broken car usually doesn't prevent a large number of other cars from working. Also, education doesn't depend on transportation directly most of the time.

> electricity

I remember quite a few days where the teacher was able to continue the lesson after a power outage. They had the benefit of a classroom with enough windows that we could still see mostly see the blackboard, so this isn't always possible. Education is therefore situationally dependent on electricity and can often continue when it isn't available.

Unlike electricity, a computer is a far more complex tool. Depending on computers implies being the target of sentient attackers in addition to the incredible complexity of "ordinary" bugs.

If the computer also requires depending on the internet, the risk that it will eventually fail is very close to 1. Many institut8ions have exchanged their older workflows that could work independently with implementations that depend on the internet. Eventually they will receive a harsh lesson about limiting complexity and minimizing external dependencies.

>education doesn't depend on transportation

Then why are schools closed on snow days?

> Then why are schools closed on snow days?

I would imagine not in Minnesota? I think this is measure to limit traffic in places where snow is rare occurance and causes a spike in accidents.

You don't have to use your imagination; you have access to the internet. Places with lots of snow every year do close schools.

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/01/06/school-closure-crite...

Nah. From the Midwest and we had a super warm winter. Mostly no snow. First day of 4 inches of snow? Schools closed and 100 car accidents. People forget how to drive in snow.

Very false.

I'm from an area with tons of snow. As I mentioned before we not only got snow days, they were budgeted into the schedule.

Ok, I misunderstood snow days to mean generally snowy days. I am from north and we have snow many months of the year. I thought if snowy day causes school to shut down it must be in a place where it doesn't snow this often. If snow day means day when school is shut down due to extreme weather it makes sense there are those especially in places with bad wearher. I wish we would have had them here when I was in school.

Sometimes it just takes long enough to clear the roads that you can't get kids to school on time (or back home on time). They try really hard not to cancel -- I remember as a kid being in a bus that slid backwards down a hill because it just couldn't get the traction. Being a successful northerner involves knowing when to hold and when to fold :)

> > directly

Teaching doesn't depend directly on transportation, but you probably use transportation infrastructure to gain access to it.

Almost every aspect of modern civilization has indirect dependencies on infrastructure such as transportation. As James Burke explains in the first episode of "Connections", we've been living in a technology trap ever since the plow was invented.

However, most of these traps are indirect. The slack in the system converts a lot of total system failures into mere inconveniences. In the case of snow days, it's easy to plan to have a few unscheduled days off. It's a lot harder to plan for infrastructure failures when you depend on it directly.

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