"[P]erhaps the most important feature of a system is how tractable it is." #readingToday

On a more aggregate level, perhaps the most important feature of a system is how tractable it is. A tractable system is easy to control, while an intractable system is difficult or even impossible to control. Many present-day systems, not least those that are of major interest for industrial safety (such as power generation, aviation, chemical and petrochemical production, healthcare, transportation, etc.) are intractable rather than tractable, cf. Chapter 3. This also goes for large-scale IT systems, such as the internet or radio networks, and for practically all socio-technical systems whether they are complex, as the ones mentioned above, or simple.

The ETTO Principle