Resilient Systems

Personal Implications

Systemic risk is easy to discuss at the level of states, laws, and platforms. It is harder to face when it shows up in my own inbox, browser, identity stack, file storage, social media, photo albums, media collections and devices.

In the Failure Modes section I describe recurring patterns that make digital systems fragile: chokepoints, control asymmetry, exit cost, deep integration, governance drift. Those modes are not abstract to me. They are a way to look at my own dependencies without relying on vibes.

This section is where I apply that lens in practice.

I document small changes I make to reduce exposure where it is concentrated, lower exit cost where it is high, and remove silent couplings where they create single points of failure. Sometimes the move works cleanly. Sometimes it reveals that I am more locked in than I thought. The point is not purity. It is learning what resilience costs when you actually have to live with the trade-offs.

Over time, I want this to become a readable trail of decisions, mistakes, and partial wins. A personal log informed by the failure modes.

Change log