I was watching James Burkes’ Connections, a brilliant historical documentary that shows how various disparate inventions throughout history are brought together in unforeseen ways to create our modern society. For example, he discusses how the study of clouds, and a phenomenon known as a “glory” (your shadow in the clouds surrounded by a reversed rainbow) led to the atom bomb. In another show, he discussed the connection between the need to feed Napoleon’s troops ultimately made possible the rocket engine that sends various payloads to their ultimate destinations; “to the moon, or Moscow. The Planets, or Peking.” He does this through a chain of connections (thus, the name), each invention being built upon the previous. It is an incredible show, if you happen to enjoy thinking about things. One show, “Faith in Numbers” made a rather strange connection for me. At one point he (inadvertently, I am sure) made a connection between the Black Death and Bureaucracy. The essence was that one result of the Black Death was a surplus of used linen undergarments, which made paper very cheap. With the surplus of paper, bureaucracy grew to absorb the available paper surplus. Now, I may be reversing cause/effect here. If so, it’s because I am stupid. But arguing that point is like arguing that the sky is blue. Now, the reason this struck a chord with me is because I see this all the time in my profession – it’s a tongue-in-cheek truism that operating systems will grow to accommodate the currently available computational power of personal computers. Another way to think about it would be that the operating system exists to soak up not just the extra CPU cycles available on the latest CPU’s, but to demand more than they can provide. This is very similar to the way the economy seems to exist for no other reason than to absorb any extra cash you may have.