Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Don’t let recent events explain a current situation when prior events combined with latency provide a better explanation.

I spent a week on the Colorado River going through the Grand Canyon. I am posting a number of stories from that week. In this post, I return to my regular blogging topics and discuss latency.

As15 an engineer, I’ve often heard people speak of latency in systems. I lived latency in the Grand Canyon. Hence, I finally “got it.”

Let’s try a few definitions:

latent: adjective – present but not visible, apparent, or actualized; existing as potential: latent ability (dictionary .com)

Okay, something exist, but I don’t see it yet. That is like when I send myself an email. I click SEND, but the email doesn’t show itself in my InBox for a few moments. It is present, but it is not visible, apparent, or actualized.

Definitions of latency are mostly self-referential. They mention things like “being latent.”

Wikipedia has a good definition of latency for the engineer:

Latency is a measure of time delay experienced in a system, the precise definition of which depends on the system and the time being measured.

Latency as experienced in the Grand Canyon: Monday through Thursday the water in the river was clear. We would fill white buckets with river water and we saw nothing but clear water in the buckets. Friday afternoon the river was filled with silt, i.e., dirt. What happened? Tuesday night it rained. Wednesday silt washed into the Colorado River from the runoff of the rain. Friday the accumulated silt joined us.

Those couple of days of clear water after a rain was the latency of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. The silt was present in the river (at some point), but was not visible, apparent, or actualized (at our location).

Latency in systems is a peculiar thing. For example, there is

Management Latency: A team’s results improve. This is not because of the current manager, but because of the good work of the prior manager. Time was required for the efforts of the prior manager to become visible, apparent, or actualized. This also happens in reverse when a team’s performance drops not because of the current manager, but because of the harm done by a previous manager.

Health Latency: A person’s health degrades quickly. This is not because of current eating and sleeping habits, but because of bad eating and sleeping habits for several decades. Time was required for the bad health habits to accumulate in the body. Those effects were present, but not visible, apparent, or actualized. This also happens in reverse when sudden good health follows a long period of beneficial health habits.

I could go on with things like:

• mental latency
• psychological latency
• spiritual latency
• financial latency
• marital latency

These could be delayed appearances from good as well as bad habits.

I suppose there is a moral to all these examples. It isn’t poetic, but would be something like:

Don’t let recent events explain a current situation when prior events combined with latency provide a better explanation.