Anyone know the details of how observability migrated from control theory to distributed computing? It’s been really weird for me to see a familiar concept turn unfamiliar. I see people acknowledge the provenance but haven’t found details. Is there a seminal paper?
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, as far as I can tell carried the idea in her own two hands.
You two would get along.
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yeah, that was my fault, for better or for worse. i've written more about it here, thenewstack.io/observability- and the technical definition as applied to software here, honeycomb.io/blog/so-you-wa
happy to chat more if you want, i am curious why you're curious :)
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(controls-flavored observability and event logging are central to a book on time I’m working on, and I was surprised to see the concept repeatedly crop up with reference to databases and services and things in the last year)
Some of what you’re seeing conceptually parallels the early chapters of Seeing Like a State. Losing legibility as complexity rises, metrics for components of a system taken as metrics for the whole, abstraction sans synthesis, bureaucrats (“professional” management) overseeing
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