Big systems are interesting; they’re complex, have many interlocking and interdependent parts and exhibit really fascinating emergent behaviour. Take a hospital, for example. You go in the door marked “EMERGENCY” and talk to the person behind the desk, while wondering just how bad the top of your head is. She asks for a few pieces of personal information, taps on her computer for a while and then looks confused. It appears that if you don’t ever go to hospital, then they don’t know who you are, and it takes a lot of clicking and typing to piece you together.

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