Technology and Tragedy

Governance of information technology: avoiding the tragedy of the commons.

Resources as Commons Biologist Garrett Hardin coined the phrase “tragedy of the commons” in his 1968 essay in Science. Hardin chose the word “tragedy” carefully. In his essay, he quotes Alfred North Whitehead: “The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.” Here, in Hardin’s words, is the classic example of the tragedy of t...

Sex, death and tragedy.

The population consequences of sexual conflict are relatively unexplored. In a recent paper, Le Galliard et al. now show that males of the common lizard Lacerta vivipara cause such damage to females that male-biased populations decrease in size, posing a real risk to the persistence of local lizard populations. Their study reveals surprising parallels between sexual conflict and the tragedy of ...

Pediatric Tragedy

Recurrent Human Tragedy During Hajj

Hajj, a unique yearly mass gathering pilgrimage of more than 2 million Muslims from around the world, presents enormous challenges to the Saudian Arabia government.1 The potential for deadly epidemic outbreaks of bacterial and viral diseases leading to upper respiratory infection and meningitis and human stampedes call for prompt attention from both pilgrims and the ministry of healt...

Halt hereditary tragedy by bridging the gap between knowledge and application of technology.