Since the Biden Administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act, I’ve been paying close attention to how and where those funds are being apportioned. When we think about infrastructure, our mind takes us straight to rail, road, and bridges. While that’s part of it, that’s not where these funds focus. They focus on dependencies - alternatives to the brick-and-mortar infrastructure that we see every day. These investments are considered transition investments and they provide alternatives and variety, a key factor in reducing dependency. Variety leads to resilience in agronomics, and it might do the same for organizations transitioning to modern work strategies.

ReWork

As distributed work continues to take hold, our economy becomes increasingly exposed to globalism. The required connections are different. Chairs and desks have transitioned to screens and cameras. File cabinets are now file-sharing applications. Phones are video cameras. This system of hardware and software, all working together for a common goal - the workflow - is the backbone of Computer Science. A real, bonified science. Something we need to be teaching more - but that’s not what this piece is about.

The best systems feel good. This is also called human-centered design, the front end. Conversely, the ease of access to files, data, connection, and information is the datasphere. This is the back end. The seamless integration of the front end with the back end is like conducting a symphony. There’s art in rhythm. Rhythm is flow in the digital world. When you get there, you know it. That’s UX. It’s similar to a well-struck golf ball or a perfect tennis serve. You barely feel it because the mechanics and physics were all perfect.

The workplace symphony requires a highly persistent and interoperable platform. The interoperability and functionality of these productivity tools are essential. To make things more complicated, these systems are highly dependent on infrastructure. Look no further than the CrowdStrike outage this week that rendered millions of machines useless. It’s no surprise the very application designed to protect us infected us - at the kernel level. Viruses are viruses both IRL and digital.

Often it’s that which we can’t see that carries the highest dependency. You can’t see your connection to the internet. You can’t see your connection to electricity. Outside of the signal strength icon, we don’t monitor or record the quality of this connection. Yet when we’re disconnected, we’re immediately aware and the struggle becomes real.

ReTool

Taking care of our analog tools is easier than our digital ones. We are good at cleaning and organizing what we can see. Out with the clutter in our file cabinet and in with the new pens in the junk drawer. It’s not that simple on our VM’s.

Here’s an example. How many tabs do you have open right now? I’m writing, so my connection to the internet is off and I have one tab open. In this case, it’s a single browser tab with the Mirror dashboard. If researching or posting something on LinkedIn - a more general workflow - I would likely have two or three productivity tools open - like OneNote, Teams, Outlook, and probably 5 or 6 active page tabs in Edge. Since I have all the frequently visited sites in my collection tab, I can match what’s open with my ability to interact with it. I stay productive by assigning these tools to my real estate. In this case, it’s two 27” monitors. I split my right screen for comms - 50/50 between Teams and Outlook. My Teams status is currently set to ‘Busy’ so my coworkers know I’m head down. That screen also has my vidcam in case I get a video call. My left screen is dedicated to apps and the Edge browser. That’s a bit more of a fluid screen. I will shift back and forth and open and close tabs on the left screen more than my fixed communication screen. The left monitor is more fluid than the right. I’m considering adding a third screen to help with the amount of editing I’m doing these days. My ability to keep this straight is a learned behavior. I attribute it all to neuroplasticity - and nothing about was easy.

I compute from a Surface Pro. It’s connected to these screens with a Surface Dock. This also allows me to handwrite on the tablet should I choose to take notes during a call. As I continue to incorporate AI more and more into my workflow, I will need to consider investing in a new machine with a Neural Processor. I can see the benefits of NPU’s because they closely match human executive function - and I’m all about offloading my ‘tasks’ to the bots.

So what?

It’s about dependency. Building resilience into a complex system requires a deep understanding of infrastructure. From an organizational perspective, Orion Growth uses the 9 Pillars of Resilience by Dr. Stephen Sideroff. We also incorporate - 5 9’s, meaning we monitor our uptime and strive to have the same resilience measures of critical infrastructure like 911 centers. In any given year, our downtime goal is less than 5 minutes and 15 seconds. This uptime equates to 99.999% of the year. Since we can’t control our ISP connections, we have NAS drives that read/write simultaneously with our inbound/outbound to Azure. If there were a power event that renders one of our teammates offline, their work is still fully accessible. Text and cellular become the backup communication protocols. If the event that caused the disconnection is any more severe than that, work isn’t the problem. The event is.

There is no way this would be possible without Fiber to the Premises - FTTP. In rural locations, like The Retreat at Firefly Farm, where we rely on Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) service interruptions are far more frequent due to weather. While it’s far improved from the high satellite solutions of the early 2000’s, LEO still has frequent interruptions, generally amounting to more of a nuisance than a full-blown outage.

ReCalculate

There’s a huge difference between 99.999% and 96.5% - over 12 DAYS. Here’s the math behind it - thanks to GPT-4o:

365 days/year×24 hours/day×60 minutes/hour×60 seconds/minute=31,536,000 seconds/year

96.5% uptime means 3.5% downtime.

To find the downtime in seconds, we calculate 3.5% of the total number of seconds in a year:

31, 536, 000  seconds/year × 0.035

1,103,760 seconds/year 31,536,000 seconds/year×0.035=1,103,760 seconds/year

So, with 96.5% uptime, the downtime in a year would be 1,103,760 seconds.

To convert this into more understandable units:

Minutes: 1, 103,760  seconds ÷ 60

18,396 minutes 1,103,760 seconds÷60=18,396 minutes

18,396  minutes ÷ 60 = 306.6 hours

306.6  hours ÷ 24 = 12.775 days

So, 96.5% uptime in a year corresponds to approximately 1,103,760 seconds, which is about 18,396 minutes, 306.6 hours, or 12.775 days of downtime and that’s too much.

ReThink

As remote work normalizes, critical infrastructure will change from cars, roads, and bridges to computers, applications, and connectivity. Network nodes will require redundancy and dependencies and resilience will come into view. Some might argue it’s an issue of national security.

We will start to maintain what we can see.

Budgets will be increased as awareness increases. We’ll use CapEx for systems infrastructure and OpEx for maintaining these systems. We will teach each other new concepts like assigning screen space and using the most productive tools. New workflows will be suggested by AI. Some of the monotonous tasks will be relegated to our bots - freeing us for more time for creative thinking. I can imagine a time when I get paid to daydream. In fact, I’m building a business on it.

Critical infrastructure has had its awakening… it’s up to us to apply it to modern work. Nature might be our best guide.

Today’s music pairing - Under the Bridge, Red Hot Chili Peppers