THE DIGITAL LABYRINTH
Why are airliners, nuclear reactors and suspension bridges so dependable?
Why are large computer systems so unreliable and expensive to build?
Why do successful businesses grow to become unmanageable?
Why are some complex systems intrinsically easier to design than others?
The Digital Labyrinth is an attempt to answer these fundamental questions about the nature of effective design.
Design is about the problem of searching a vast space of possibilities - a 'fitness landscape' - to find the optimal solutions occupying the peaks of fitness. However, the ruggedness of the fitness landscape is radically different for different problem domains - mechanical engineering and computer programming for example. The book explores how the character of design is determined by the underlying search space, and why some design problems are inherently easier to solve - irrespective of their apparent complexity.
THE TRIAL OF CHARLES DARWIN
In an alternative 1869 a fundamentalist Catholic Empire has a stranglehold over England - New Albion. Rome’s secret police, the Brotherhood, enforce strict religious conformity through terror, show trials and public executions. Following his 1859 On The Origin of Species Charles Darwin is branded a heretic and is on the run. Betrayed by an inner ‘mole’ he flees to Canada. He is betrayed by his devoted wife Emma and captured and brought to trial back in England. His public show trial is a fireworks display of argument between Darwin, his arch advocate Thomas Huxley and Darwin’s cousin, lgnatius Wedgewood, leader of the Church’s secret intelligence agency. Darwin is convicted or heresy and executed. On the morning of his death Gregor Mendel publishes his seminal work on genetics which give vital and compelling new evidence that Darwin’s was, in his essential premises, correct.