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Cascade Failure.

The article discusses problems caused by specialization and obsolescence in technology. The author uses the concept of cascade failure, in which one technology failure triggers a series of increasingly large consequent failures, to illustrate the potential effects of small changes to a product or ma...

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Published in:Communications of the ACM Vol. 58; no. 5; pp. 7 - 8
Main Author: Cerf, Vinton G.
Format: Article
Published: Association for Computing Machinery May2015
Subjects:
Technological obsolescence
Product obsolescence
Computer system failures
Electric batteries
CD-ROMs
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:The article discusses problems caused by specialization and obsolescence in technology. The author uses the concept of cascade failure, in which one technology failure triggers a series of increasingly large consequent failures, to illustrate the potential effects of small changes to a product or market. Topics discussed include batteries for hearing aids, ink cartridges for printers, and specialized format devices such as DVD and CD-ROM disks.