How much change can a system absorb and still remain viable and functional?
Resilient systems have a high threshold for functioning under change. The internet is resilient. It was designed to conitue working during war by instantly rerouting data traffic around damage anywhere in the overall system.
The opposite of resilient is brittle. General Motors is brittle. It is a centrally controlled corporation whose weakest link, its central control and management, is diseased killing the entire system.
To really oversimplify things, here’s a little free association:
| Brittle | Resilient |
|---|---|
| Large parts | Small parts |
| Complex parts | Simple parts |
| Small quantities | Enormous quanitites |
| Co-dependency | Independent interconnectedness |
| Specialization | Generalization |
| Low redundancy | High redundancy |
| Command and control | Evolutionary |
| Fewer but more vulnerable links | More but less vulnerable links |
| Rigid | Adaptable |
| Monolithic | Diverse |
| General Motors | The Internet |
| A cheetah | An ant colony |
| Lions | Hyenas |
| Ritual warfare | Guerrila warfare |
| Concentration | Distribution |
| Complicated | Simple |
| Easy short term profits | Long term sustainability |
Damage to brittle systems quickly matastasizes acrcoss the entire system leading to catastrophic disruptions and collapse. Meanwhile resilient systems keep damage localized allowing the entire system to continue functioning normally while things either get repaired or culled.
The scope of our current economic troubles are I think a direct result of global financial systems that have become increasingly brittle over the past many years–making the entire system extremely vulnerable to what would have otherwise been local fraud and corruption.
Where did this brittleness come from? Traditional business management sees redundancies as inefficiencies to be rooted out, strives to make small into large economies of scale, and fids distribution freightening due to a lack of control.
When things are good business can realize greater profit from brittle economies of scale and centralization than it can from resilience. Of course when thigs go bad and the brittleness shatters, business tries to hold a taxpayer stick-up. Reach for the sky, suckers!
What does this mean for design?
Well, resilience (even more than simplicity, because it assumes simplicity) should be a primary design priniciple. The more change our designs can withstand before they collapse the better. And if that means less short term profits, fine because the long term benefits are greater.
To survive I think we need to leave behind industrial modes of thinking and begin to think small, think simple, think coordinated.
As Schumacher says, small is beautiful beacause that’s the scale on which we live our lives.