Dirty Big Service

In my country there is a bank, neither bonny nor related to Loch Lomond. However, it is a dirty big service provider with intimate ties (like a corset) to the nation. What is appalling is (to follow the train of thought begun in my previous post) that this large bank has apparently switched over to some new software. Some people have not had their accounts credited promptly, others have been sent letters saying that their loan installments have not been paid on time.

It happened to my father recently. I was most surprised; he's not the sort to be late with payments. We scrambled to pay up. The bank sent another letter. We were a little alarmed. We opened the letter. It was an apology for the previous letter, which had been 'sent out by mistake'.

The roots of the matter are complex. Suffice it to say that the more interactions are available, the more possibilities for chaos exist. Where the space of interaction is limited, the severity of chaotic effect in terms of impact on the interacting entities will be large. As the number of entities and possible interactions multiplies out of control, the only way to have a functional polity is to censor the available information and interactions.

I'm reading Charles Stross's intelligent and dynamic Glasshouse right now. Almost done. What struck me in a few pages was that the world Stross writes about, in which historians are targeted by assassins and revisionism is a system-wide disease carried by humans, is very much like the world I live in. Except that Glasshouse is also about an experiment in living like we do, from the perspective of a future generation in the more-distant future (well, after the Acceleration, that is).

My country is a microcosm of the Strossian universe. I read Stross and think about how he would be so at home here. We should get him in as expatriate talent. He could be our chronicler. Haha.