No advance could be made in one place that couldn’t accommodate weaknesses somewhere else down the line. Little by little, this build here, that reform there, developed into the grid we have: it is a jury-rigged result—highly inventive in places, totally stodgy in some, fantastically Rube Goldberg in yet others. As implausible as it must sound, the machine that holds the whole of our modern life in place “works in practice, but not in theory.” No one can see, grasp, or plan for the whole of it.
