20
Magical Systems Thinking
(worksinprogress.co)
Building systems to purpose and expanding them rather than trying to untangle and rearrange existing complex systems. Felt very anarchist. Grabbed some of my favorite snippets.
The systems that enable modern life share a common origin. The water supply, the internet, the international supply chains bringing us cheap goods: each began life as a simple, working system. The first electric grid was no more than a handful of electric lamps hooked up to a water wheel in Godalming, England, in 1881. It then took successive decades of tinkering and iteration by thousands of very smart people to scale these systems to the advanced state we enjoy today. At no point did a single genius map out the final, finished product.
But this lineage of (mostly) working systems is easily forgotten. Instead, we prefer a more flattering story: that complex systems are deliberate creations, the product of careful analysis. And, relatedly, that by performing this analysis – now known as ‘systems thinking’ in the halls of government – we can bring unruly ones to heel. It is an optimistic perspective, casting us as the masters of our systems and our destiny.
The empirical record says otherwise, however. Our recent history is one of governments grappling with complex systems and coming off worse.
Meanwhile, our successes, when they do come, are invariably the result of starting small. As the systems we have built slip further beyond our collective control, it is these simple working systems that offer us the best path back.
