Having posted nothing here for around seven years, I'm getting back to it.
These days, lots of people seem to be acting as if society is falling apart -- like the System is breaking down. Americans are driving fast, ditching school, taking their own lives, dying of drug overdose, and generally treating each other badly at a greater rate than at any other time in our history. The COVID-19 pandemic gets a lot of blame for these behaviors, but in many cases the trends were apparent well before that virus arrived. It's as if people perceive that our world is regressing toward anarchy -- as if the old ways won't serve us any more, so we must now grab all the gratification, resources, and attention we can hold onto, before our meaningless lives burn out, or the bad guys come to enslave us, whichever comes first.
So I like to look around for clues that the System is not actually falling apart. Yesterday, the garbage truck came to my house right on schedule to hoist my garbage roll-cart high in the air, flip it over, collect its contents, and place it back down on the street. It was satisfying and reassuring to see this commonplace technological marvel, which goes on thousands of times all over town each week. If it should ever happen that several weeks go by without garbage collection -- which does sometimes happen in some cities -- I'll begin to worry about the System, but so far it hasn't been a problem around here.
Another thing I like to look at is the worldwide flow of aircraft, which you can see on the website FlightRadar24. Every day, almost everywhere on Earth, thousands of airplanes are flying around the clock, constantly shipping people and goods among the nations of the world.
Air traffic across the north Atlantic on the evening of 10 August 2023
(from FlightRadar24)
True, if you're worried about climate change, you may see all this air traffic as one more sign of an impending calamity, since it signifies that a huge amount of carbon dioxide exhaust from the combustion of jet fuel is being unloaded into the atmosphere. But I'm looking for technological and policy fixes to avoid climate catastrophes on a scale that would collapse society. I'd prefer to think about the vast array of interlocking networks that allow the continuous flow of air traffic around Planet Earth -- the training organizations that prepare the world's pilots, flight crews, mechanics, air traffic controllers, and technicians to operate the technology they are responsible for; the agencies and airlines that employ them, schedule their work, schedule the flights, sell the tickets, purchase and maintain the aircraft, handle passengers' baggage without losing too much of it, and regulate the system; the industries that manufacture the aircraft, radar, and navigation systems, build the airports and runways, supply your next flight with fuel, food, and beverage, and empty the waste from the airplane lavatories; the ground transportation networks that move all this stuff, as well as passengers, to and from the airports; the communication systems that let all these parts interact, and let you log in to the on-board wifi; the financial systems that allow goods, services, aircraft, and facilities to be purchased and everyone to be paid; and the insurance networks that help to spread and thus mitigate the risk of systemic, mechanical, and economic mishap.
It's all working, mostly, and most of the time. At least, it was working just now when I checked FlightRadar24. The next time you find yourself despairing over the state of society, take a look at FlightRadar24, or maybe
FlightStats, and see if flight SAS935 is en route from Copenhagen to San Francisco, just for example. Or do a web search and see if there are any flights from Houston to Mumbai, as another example. Also, see if you have water coming out of your kitchen tap when you open it, and see if the kitchen lights come on when you flip the switch. If the System passes all of these tests, maybe you can breathe a little easier.
