CONCEPT

The Complacency Cycle

Petroski's empirical observation that engineering catastrophes recur on roughly thirty-year intervals — a rhythm driven not by structural decay but by generational loss of the institutional memory of failure, and a cycle AI threatens to compress to a fraction of its historical period.

A disaster occurs. The profession mobilizes. Codes are revised, inspection protocols tightened. A generation of engineers, marked by the catastrophe they witnessed or studied in its aftermath, practices with heightened caution. The structures they design carry generous margins. Their assumptions are conservative. The profession, collectively, remembers. Then the memory fades — not because the codes forget (the codes retain the revisions) but because the felt urgency dissipates. The engineers who witnessed the catastrophe retire. Their replacements know the revised codes but not the collapse that prompted the revision. Each successful design confirms, for this new generation, that the margins can be reduced. Confidence grows. Margins narrow. Until conditions arrive that the narrowed margins cannot absorb, and the cycle begins again. Petroski documented this pattern across bridge engineering, building construction, and aerospace: Tay 1879, Quebec 1907, Tacoma Narrows 1940, Silver Bridge 1967, Hyatt Regency 1981, I-35W 2007. The intervals are approximate but the

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