Yesterday's massive Microsoft outage, leaving millions without Outlook and other critical tools, occurred on the precise date Heinz von Foerster warned humanity would be 'squeezed to death' from overpopulation in his 1960 paper.
Von Foerster's model forecast infinite exponential growth, projecting that the world population would reach a breaking point on November 13, 2026, a Friday. The prediction proved overly pessimistic as global birth rates have halved since 1960, keeping the population far below his doomsday trajectory.
The outage, which began Friday morning and persisted through the evening, highlighted modern reliance on digital infrastructure, contrasting the analog fears of the 1960s with today's cyber vulnerabilities.
The coincidence underscores how outdated apocalyptic forecasts can be eclipsed by both demographic reality and technological resilience.