Every act of communication is, at its heart, a living paradox: it’s an act of both forgetting and creation. When we speak, remember, or make sense of the world, we don’t transmit the full weight of experience. We compress, we select, we abstract—letting go of details, pruning the chaos of the past into something portable, survivable, and shareable. The art of observability, then, isn’t in perfect preservation, but in wise selection and creative reconstruction—in knowing what to forget and what to imagine next.
Author: William David Louth
Observability: The Great Misunderstanding
The term "observability" is ubiquitous in software engineering, yet a profound misunderstanding clouds its current practice. Observability isn’t what most organizations are doing—it’s what they think they bought. What they’re engaged in is often mere telemetry plumbing, a far cry from genuine system sense-making.
Serventis—The Probes API
In modern observability, we’re drowning in telemetry—metrics, logs, and traces—yet starved of understanding. The Serventis Probes API offers a radical shift: from measuring activity to interpreting meaning. Built on the principles of semiotics, Probes emit structured judgments—what happened, where it happened, and whether it worked. These observations form lightweight, perspective-rich narratives that expose the truth behind system behavior. Not just noise. Not just data. But meaning, at last.
Observability X – Subscribers
The Sources interface in the Substrates API allows for a number of ways to set up a Subscriber and in turn an outlet Pipe. Subscribers provide the means to connect one or more Pipes with emitting Subjects within a Source. When a Percept (instrument) emits a value, that value is forwarded to all Pipes that have been connected by a Subscriber via a Registrar.
Observability: Cleanup Crew or Cartel?
Observability was supposed to bring clarity. Instead, it risks becoming the IT equivalent of a waste management cartel — collecting endless data, burying it out of sight, and billing handsomely for the privilege. Open standards like OpenTelemetry promised freedom, but they often just make dumping easier, not smarter. The sad truth is that most of what we collect will never be recycled into insight. We explore why the observability industry, much like modern waste management, thrives on accumulation — not renewal — and how fear, opacity, and misaligned incentives have turned what should have been green fields into digital landfills.
Beyond Pixels: Reframing Observability
The observability crisis isn’t about missing data; rather, it’s about missing meaning. While we’re inundated with metrics, traces, and logs, we’re simultaneously deprived of understanding. Our systems are narrating stories, yet we’re merely collecting the words. Confinement to a pixel-level fixation on metrics, traces, and logs renders today’s observability practices fundamentally retrospective. They measure the consequences, not the progression. They concentrate on fragments, not the underlying forces. To truly comprehend systems—to anticipate, guide, and sustain—we must transcend data collection and adopt the perception of dynamic narratives.
Managing Complex Systems
Drawing inspiration from the insights of cybernetics and systems thinking, we propose a cohesive framework centered around three essential, interacting functional components: Observability, Controllability, and Operability. This universal framework, underpinned by foundational capabilities (measurement, memory, and models), offers a potent lens for conceiving, comprehending, and controlling virtually any purposeful system, effectively bridging the disparity between abstract theoretical concepts and tangible practical applications.
The Existential Void in Observability
Modern observability suffers from an existential void, mistaking metric abundance for genuine understanding. Current practices emphasize granular measurement but neglect synthesizing comprehensive system insights. A paradigm shift toward continuous, holistic assessments of system stability and confidence—visualized as intuitive, dynamic representations—leverages innate human cognitive strengths. This transition addresses the root architectural flaw in current methodologies, replacing numerical theater with true insight into complex digital environments.
Why Observability Can’t Save Us
Dazzling dashboards, collapsing systems: Has observability become a beautiful lie? We've meticulously instrumented our complex digital world, yet meaningful insights remain elusive amidst a deluge of data. This post argues that the limitations of traditional observability in the face of emergent behaviors and dynamic topologies demand a radical shift towards a more comprehensive "situational intelligence" – one that moves beyond mere monitoring to true comprehension and proactive action. It's time to admit: observability alone can't save us.
Simplicity as Contextual Integrity
What if simplicity isn’t about wielding a machete to prune the excess, but about constructing a lighthouse whose beam remains clear and steadfast, piercing through any fog? We frequently envision simplicity as minimalism: a stark, uncluttered space, a reduction to the fundamental elements. It’s akin to stripping a machine down to its core components.