There are so many juicy metaphors to be found in yesterday’s collapse of the Eastern power grid, it’s hard to know where to begin. But, in deference to the millions without air conditioning, public transportation, and Starbucks Frappuccino, I’ll only pick one and let it go: cascade failure.
The news today is describing a classic example of a ‘cascade failure’, a potential tendency of any highly interconnected network running at capacity (here’s an article in the Washington Post on the topic). For example, if a network of power generators are all running at full blast and one cuts out, the demand is distributed to the others. Since they are all running at 100 percent already, the increased load sends them over the top. The weak ones go first, distributing an even greater load to the others until one by one they are all overwhelmed. Hence the name ‘cascade failure.’ I use the example of electrical networks, but the same can be true for natural ecosystems, computer networks, biological systems, and on and on.
Why the lesson in networks? Just think of the network of organizations, funders, and associations that create, present, support, and deliver the arts across America. These organizations and individuals are mostly running at over-capacity (long hours, low pay, bad computers, etc.). They are more interconnected than they know. Many are showing signs of burning out. And most of the generators that kept them going are cutting back or cutting out (state arts agencies, national foundations, individual donors, earned income, volunteer labor, etc.).
The best and only way to avoid cascade failure in any network is to recognize the interconnection, and to create incentives for individual players (inside and outside the system) to consider the health of the system in their choices. If anyone knows of projects that seek to do this in the arts ecosystem, please let me know. Maybe I missed them.
