System Resilience

System Resilience

Night view of a city skyline with illuminated skyscrapers and a bridge, home to a self-healing power grid, all reflected in the water below.
A new generation of self-healing tools could make the U.S.'s aging power grid far more resilient against modern threats.
An older man in a suit sits on a chair in front of a backdrop showing a dramatic classical painting of chaos and destruction.
1hr 43mins
Historian Eric Cline argues the Bronze Age collapse wasn't the work of one invading force or one bad harvest, but something far harder to stop: An overly interdependent system that had no way to absorb multiple shocks at once.
A satellite with extended accordion-like solar panels or reflectors, possibly supporting AI data centers in space, orbits above Earth, with the planet’s surface visible in the background.
There are plenty of engineering obstacles, and those can be overcome. But you cannot change the laws of physics, and those matter too.
A man in a black suit sits on a chair in front of a white backdrop in a modern brick-walled room with large windows and minimal furnishings.
1hr 23mins
"The process of systematizing, correcting errors, finding approximations, and making them work as civil systems that was what really drove me to start looking at human calculation and what was the foundation that it laid for the modern computer age."
A collage with the text "THE NIGHTCRAWLER," featuring a hand holding money, coins, and a windowed building, all tinted in pink and black tones.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Wind turbines on grassy hills under a clear blue sky.
And can we run the grid of the future without AI?
Illustration of a drone exploring over a dusty, red martian landscape with mountains in the background.
NASA's minivan-sized drone is scheduled to search for signs of life on Titan in 2034.
a group of rocks with blue light coming from them.
Lost in a building or underwater? A new muon-based navigation system could be your guide.
Abstract illustration of segmented, wood-textured shapes arranged in an oval formation on a green background.
7mins
This network physicist is mapping the world's most significant data to create the most beautiful visualizations of information we have ever seen.
John Templeton Foundation
A railroad bridge collapse
Catastrophes are difficult to predict because they are so rare. But AI using active learning can make predictions from very small data sets.
James Webb Space Telescope
With launch, deployment, calibration, and science operations about to commence, here are 10 facts that are absolutely true.
Designed for a 90-day mission each, dust killed the overachieving Spirit and threatens to now kill Opportunity. But it didn’t have to be this way. In 2004, NASA launched two exploration […]