Chapter 1: Expecting the unexpected

Old certainties are disappearing: 21st century democratic countries are being challenged as never before. The uncertainties can sometimes feel overwhelming – breeding fear, inhibiting our working together and making us even more prone to fragmentation. We need, more than ever before in the history of the human race, to collaborate and learn from experience and from each other to increase our resilience against unknown future shocks (Figure 1.1). This is a book about infrastructure. Whether you are an expert or a layperson, why should you take an interest in infrastructure? Surely infrastructure is something we can and do take for granted. It is not exactly ‘rocket science’. The answer is two-fold. First, everyone, without exception, depends on it. Second, and more urgently, many of the things that we have come to take for granted are beginning to fail – and the reasons for this are actually complex and challenging. To manage this situation we need to encourage some of our best young people to train for and take up the relevant jobs. Kanter (2015) has eloquently set out the case in the USA. She writes: