Workshop as Ecosystem
Symbiosis, Density, and Biologic Thinking
I have been a bit quiet. The past few months though, there is a strand of thinking that I have been encountering in many places. This hit me as I was reading the great Wendell Berry (I'm not quite sure how I didn't read this book yet, but here I am):
The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order - a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, "hard facts"; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.
(Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America)
This is related to how plant/soil biology works:
To gain biologically available access to a needed nutrient, a plant must attract specific microbes that are genetically hard-wired to solubilize that particular mineral. The process is not yet fully understood, but it goes something like this: A plant sends out a chemical signal via its exudates that it needs a particular nutrient, such as phosphorus, and the microbes attuned to this signal respond accordingly.
(Gabe Brown, Dirt to Soil)
And has impacts on how we build, especially our spaces:
This language, like English, can be a medium for prose, or a medium for poetry. The difference between prose and poetry is not that different languages are used, but the same language is used, differently. In an ordinary English sentence, each word has one meaning, and the sentence too, has one simple meaning. In a poem, the meaning is far more dense.
...
It is possible to make buildings by stringing together patterns, in a rather loose way. A building made like this, is an assembly of patterns. It is not dense. It is not profound. But it is also possible to put patterns together in such a way that many many patterns overlap in the same physical space: the building is very dense; it has many meanings captured in a small space; and through this density, it becomes profound.
(Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language)
Which is yet again related to software:
The code base we create is not the true product of our work. The real product is the mental theory of that code base which:
Allowed us to create it in the first place.
Allows us to diagnose problems with it and fix them.
Allows us to modify it easily.
…
when all the people who have a theory of a given program stop working on it. It dies. Yikes. It’s claimed that we can’t rebuild a theory from code and documentation.
(John Wiles, Suddenly I Understand Software)
Heck, I think it's even the quality conundrum of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair. I won't subject you to that but rather:
The way to solve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to run away from technology. That's impossible. The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is: not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.
(Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
In designing good systems - beautiful systems - we are concerned not only with making something function from the outside, but function inside as well. Its function should rhyme and have an internal consistency all the way down. It should also have this dense beautiful meaning that
We should avoid kludges: tacked-on series of technologies that don't have harmony in form, aesthetics, construction, or theory. Kludges have lots of 'loose ends': byproducts that must be dealt with or simply ejected, nonfunctional bolts and ports.
We should also avoid monoliths: singular entities that cannot be opened up, examined, repurposed, and most importantly, understood. Monoliths have singular purpose and often do not lend themselves to repurposing. Such machines are doomed to their use in "prose": having one singular meaning, struggling to be linked to other things. Modern cars try to turn themselves into monoliths. Manufacturers seem ashamed that a car would ever need to be worked on (except by a licensed mechanic) and hide their engines under double-hoods, their functions behind sensors and computers, to be accessed with cryptic codes that even mechanics are baffled by.
Good systems leverage biologic, synergistic, co-operative genius: it is possible for two things to work together in a positive-sum game. The aim we should have in designing good systems is not to manage the tradeoffs between two parties such that it is most “fair”, it is to manage their interaction such that it is maximally co-operative rather than competitive; to steer away from competition in entirety1.
What does this mean in practice?
It seems to be something like this: do not map a pre-conceived functional model onto things. Yes, man does work, the cow makes milk, and the grass photosynthesizes. It is also true that the cow eats the grass and the man drinks the milk. But these are a mere minutia of all the actions that each does. The grass grows roots, it communicates with microbes, it respirates - to enumerate only a few activities. Cows and men are even more complex yet - but their complexity is of an unknown nature, constantly revealed through work and engagement.
As we explore new territories, new behaviors emerge in combinatorial fashion. If we assume that men are functions - especially functions which only accept arbitarially selected inputs - we will be sorely disappointed to find both problems from the unexpected stimuli, but missed opportunities.
We can instead ask curiously at every stage of development: “Why is this going the way it is? What does this have to say about the nature of the subject?”
Furthermore, we need to do so with an eye towards perfection, rather than extraction. What is most fitting for the cow? It produces excess milk - and could use some care. Let us house and keep it, and milk it. In this way, we co-operate with it, seeking both its good and ours.
Can we say the same of technological devices? This gives me pause. From a thousand-year perspective, what is given is raw materials: iron ore, dirt, trees, etc.. But from our individual perspective, cars, computers, hammers, and so forth are given. How do we direct what is given? How do we co-operate with the technology that we have?
Certainly, “separate it; cast it off; burn it” is one valid option. In many cases I suspect it is the right one. But it seems not. As we co-operate with iron ore, it seems that it is perfected in steel; and then particular bits are perfected in tools: saws, chisels, hammers. These, with the power and will of men driving them, form a sort of ecosystem: men build tools, men with tools build houses, men in houses raise more men. Simple tools, in this way, are eerily organic.
But to be organic, these tools exist within the context of other different tools: one cannot make a hammer with (just) a hammer; in addition to the varied raw material, man needs fire, axes, anvils, tongs, etc..
We now live in a world where tools are segregated from each other. Just as we have taken animals off the land and put them in confinement, where inputs are fed to them in exchange for outputs, we have put our tools in confined workshops. These workshops are usually not complete ecosystems; they require imports to keep functioning.
This gives me pause and makes me wonder: if the new direction of hope in agriculture is “regeneration”, is the new direction of hope in technology “regeneration” as well - and what can we learn from ecology?
In some cases, the pathway to maximal co-operation is segregration of two things, at least for certain periods of time. We shouldn't expect all things to have synergy (and especially not in the same ways) - that’s the logic of the meat-grinder-of-modernity.