Vertebrate technology
Fragments on the anatomical structure of technology
Hierarchies evolve from the lowest level up—from the pieces to the whole, from cell to organ to organism, from individual to team, from actual production to management of production. Early farmers decided to come together and form cities for self-protection and for making trade more efficient. Life started with single-cell bacteria, not with elephants. The original purpose of a hierarchy is always to help its originating subsystems do their jobs better. This is something, unfortunately, that both the higher and the lower levels of a greatly articulated hierarchy easily can forget. Therefore, many systems are not meeting our goals because of malfunctioning hierarchies
(Donella Meadows, 2008. Thinking in Systems)
Hierarchy is emergent, not imposed from above. This is why we see hierarchy in nature—central nervous systems, keystone species, cells, organs, and organisms—even though there is no boss of nature.
However, a hierarchy, once established, tends to find ways to perpetuate itself.
Modularity—programmers make use of modularity all over the place, to organize code, to hide internals, to break big things down into small things. Modularity is one of the design principles that makes the internet resilient.
Modularity is a design principle that intentionally makes components highly independent (“loosely coupled”).
(Barbara van Schewick, 2010. Internet Architecture and Innovation)
In hierarchical systems relationships within each subsystem are denser and stronger than relationships between subsystems. Everything is still connected to everything else, but not equally strongly.
(Donella Meadows, 2008. Thinking in Systems)
Because modules are designed to be independent, I naturally tend to think of modularity as decoupled, unstructured, nonhierarchical.
But of course, modules are designed to be pieced together into larger assemblies. Modularity is a form of hierarchy.
Modules together form a new composite unit
Modules themselves may be composite units
Once assembled, the needs of the larger assembly may dictate the future evolution of the modules—downward causation.
If a team member is more interested in personal glory than in the team winning, he or she can cause the team to lose. If a body cell breaks free from its hierarchical function and starts multiplying wildly, we call it a cancer. If students think their purpose is to maximize personal grades instead of seeking knowledge, cheating and other counterproductive behaviors break out. If a single corporation bribes the government to favor that corporation, the advantages of the competitive market and the good of the whole society are eroded.
When a subsystem’s goals dominate at the expense of the total system’s goals, the resulting behavior is called suboptimization.
Just as damaging as suboptimization, of course, is the problem of too much central control. If the brain controlled each cell so tightly that the cell could not perform its self-maintenance functions, the whole organism could die. If central rules and regulations prevent students or faculty from exploring fields of knowledge freely, the purpose of the university is not served. The coach of a team might interfere with the on-the-spot perceptions of a good player, to the detriment of the team. Economic examples of overcontrol from the top, from companies to nations, are the causes of some of the great catastrophes of history, all of which are by no means behind us.
To be a highly functional system, hierarchy must balance the welfare, freedoms, and responsibilities of the subsystems and total system—there must be enough central control to achieve coordination toward the large- system goal, and enough autonomy to keep all subsystems flourishing, functioning, and self-organizing.
(Donella Meadows, 2008. Thinking in Systems)
There once were two watchmakers, named Hora and Tempus, who made very fine watches. The phones in their workshops rang frequently and new customers were constantly calling them. However, Hora prospered while Tempus became poorer and poorer. In the end, Tempus lost his shop. What was the reason behind this?
The watches consisted of about 1000 parts each. The watches that Tempus made were designed such that, when he had to put down a partly assembled watch, it immediately fell into pieces and had to be reassembled from the basic elements. Hora had designed his watches so that he could put together sub-assemblies of about ten components each, and each sub-assembly could be put down without falling apart. Ten of these subassemblies could be put together to make a larger sub-assembly, and ten of the larger sub-assemblies constituted the whole watch.
(Herbert Simon, 1968. The Sciences of the Artificial)
Complex systems can evolve from simple systems only if there are stable intermediate forms. The resulting complex forms will naturally be hierarchic.
(Donella Meadows, 2008. Thinking in Systems)
Hierarchy also emerges in evolving systems, because evolution happens through composition. Complex things, like animals, are composed of simpler things, like cells, DNA, molecules, atoms.
Evolution favors modules.
Technologies all have a particular structure.
A technology is always organized around a central concept or principle: “the method of the thing”, or essential idea that allows it to work. The principle of a clock is to count the beats of some stable frequency. The principle of radar—its essential idea—is to send out high-frequency radio waves and detect distant objects by analyzing the reflections of these signals from the objects’ surfaces…
To be brought into physical reality a principle needs to be expressed in the form of physical components. In practice, this means that a technology consists of a main assembly: an overall backbone of the device or method that executes its base principle. This backbone is supported by other assemblies to take care of its working, regulate its function, feed it with energy, and perform other subsidiary tasks…
So the primary structure of a technology consists of a main assembly that carries out its base function plus a set of sub-assemblies that support this.
(W. Brian Arthur, 2009. The Nature of Technology)
Technologies are vertebrates.
Unlike ordinary vertebrates, technologies can be pieced together to create new technologies. Technology evolves through composition, just like other evolving systems, only more literally.
The hierarchy that forms this way is treelike: the overall technology is the trunk, the main assembly the main branches, their subassemblies the sub-branches, and so on, with the elemental parts the furthest twigs... Real-world technologies can be anywhere from two to ten or more layers deep; the more complicated and modular the technology, the deeper the hierarchy…
Technologies, in other words, have a recursive structure. They consist of technologies within technologies all the way down to the elemental parts.
(W. Brian Arthur, 2009. The Nature of Technology)
Open questions and musings:
How might our understanding of decentralized systems change if we view hierarchy as emergent, rather than imposed?
We might see protocols as the backbone of decentralized networks. There is a hierarchical relationship between the protocol and the things that conform to it. In what ways might we maintain sufficient decentralization under the pressure of downward causation?
Decentralized systems aim to distribute power laterally. In what ways might we aim to decentralize power, while acknowledging that hierarchy is emergent and evolution favors modularity?
Keeping protocols minimal and open-ended shifts requisite variety from protocol to app, devolving power downwards. Depending on the details, this may help maintain decentralization, or it may lead to centralization one level down.
If hierarchies naturally evolve, what prompts systems to become decentralized? Hierarchies tend to ossify and become brittle, leading them to periodically collapse back into decentralized states.
Technology is a vertebrate. Does this mean large frameworks, like game engines, and operating systems, are inevitable?