Society · Coordination
OrganicWork
Work whose shape is not fully controlled centrally and is not dominated by a single objective
Definition
Mechanism
Several tasks share the same agents, components or channels and partly trade off against each other, so no component is dedicated to one task and no single objective sets the overall shape. Work gets done through overlap and compromise rather than a clean division of labour: proteins that 'moonlight' in side roles, signalling channels that serve more than one purpose, staff who weigh instructions against their own view of what the organisation needs. The resulting shape is looser than ShapeControl would produce, but more function is packed into the same agents and the system draws on MetaModularity. This differs from the 'organically grown' monolith of IT systems, which is MonoModularity reached by accretion.
Invariants
- No component is dedicated exclusively to one task
- No single objective dominates the overall shape
- The looseness of shape comes from overlapping work, not from neglect
Risks
Failure modes
Mistaking it for a tightly coupled monolith that grew by accretion
Trying to map it like a machine, as if each part had one function, so interventions have unexpected effects
Forcing a clean division of labour on it and losing the overlapping functions
Relationships
Builds on
References
Mind
A body plan that holds many overlapping but non-identical models of the same problem, ready to instantiate whichever fits
Mind
A body plan in which one model processes every situation, treating each situation as just more data for the same process
Mind
Keeping an organisation, model or trajectory close to a desired form or target, with information serving that form
Nothing in this library builds on this pattern yet.
Reference