Molson Hart

I'm not authority on air safety, but I'm at a loss why people as sensible as engineers think making passenger planes increasingly more complicated to troubleshoot can be viewed as better/safer. Imagine if norm for bridge design was adding continually harder to assess parts.

I read a comment several years ago, I forget from whom, which stated that large software applications are the most complex artefacts that have ever been undertaken by humanity. I don't know if that is quite so, but it is certainly close.

More complex than cities?

Cities mostly grow and attempts at urban planning at best just hope to direct their energy in gentle ways. Cities that have been planned from the ground up haven't very successful; e.g., consider Brasília. In any event the level of human control doesn't approach that of coding.

Maybe the more interesting question is why do cities seem to be resistant to fast acting catastrophic failures. They are incrediably complex, and have the possibility for points of failure that can cascade through the entire system very quickly.