machines?

Computers are like crops. In both, the rules of natural selection apply. For crops, you have predators such as insects, beetles and worms who contribute to the ecosystem by eating one specific variety of corn, of which you've planted 89 hectares worth. Damn! So, coat that corn in pesticide, kill the beetles, and call it a day! With computers, you've got viruses and adware/malware, which target specific operating systems and programs (which constitute "species" of computers for the sake of this argument). So, slap on some antivirus software and forget about the problem. Forget... It'll go away... Forget...
So the point I'm getting at is that we have a computing monoculture, which is bad for exactly the same reason that food monoculture is bad: it only takes one variety of beetle that wants to eat it for all 89 hectares to go to ruin. You don't have to learn anything new here, just universally apply my metaphor, and encourage computing diversity! You'll be more robust! Use alternative browsers! Try out some Linux! Try your best to stay away from commercial office software solutions!
This makes me think about living systems, and how they're different from human mechanical systems. The ideal ecosystem, for example, has many parts, often interchangeable or overlapping, held together by diversity. An ideal system in the "natural" world is the one with the greatest co-existing diversity of parts. An ideal system (in terms of robustness/longevity) in the human-designed world, however, is the most generic an heterogeneous one.
Take cars, for example. Is it easier to maintain a Bugatti or a Toyota Camry? Arguably, the Bugatti is theoretically higher performance in many ways. But a Toyota Camry can take the most abuse - there are a plethora of available spare parts should it break, and most mechanics know or can figure out how to fix one... Try getting Joe at JP Auto to fix your mint-condition 1963 Aston-Martin, and you may run into difficulties.
So human systems seem to be, in this respect, in direct antipathy to natural systems. The most robust human-designed system is the one most representing a monoculture, which in the natural world is the worst system. This implies to me that we sould possibly shift our way of thinking to be more like the natural world, and thus more robust in the face of calamity. Encourage diversity! Customization! Make everything you do unique, and when the proverbial shit hits the proverbial pan, you'll stand a greater likelihood of being able to tough it out.
At least, that was what I thought this morning.

Latiflearned.com is far less pesudo-intellectual than this page.