Mind · Strategy
MultiModularity
A body plan of standardised, separate parts that can be swapped like for like
Definition
Mechanism
The organisation is built from distinct, standardised modules with fixed interfaces: nuts and bolts, plugs and sockets, standard job roles, specialised stages of an assembly line. When a part fails or must be replaced, a new part of the same standard slots in without redesigning the rest. This makes construction cheap and fast, repair easy and anticipated modification simple, and underlies industrial specialisation of labour. It manages the risk of scarce resources and of damage, but because each replacement is essentially the same as the old part, it cannot change how a function is done; each module does something specialised that does not overlap with the others.
Invariants
- Modules share standard interfaces and can be replaced like for like
- Modules do not overlap in function
- Replacing a module preserves, rather than changes, how the function is performed
Risks
Failure modes
Expecting standard swappable parts to deliver adaptation to environments the standard did not anticipate
Treating redundancy of identical spares as if it provided options for new directions
Relationships
Root pattern: builds on nothing in this library.
Used by
References
The gap between how humans model and manage risk and how organisms manage it: decision over organisation, prediction over creation, control of shape over change of shape
Society
Natural work overlaps: doing more of one task always means doing a little less of another, and imperfect alignment between them packs more function into the same agents
Reference