Systems as a way to organize complexity

One pattern runs through things that appear unrelated: a database, a commercial operation, a notebook and an entire company. Each is an attempt to organize complexity.

When complexity grows without structure, the outcome is always similar: duplicated information, decisions based on incorrect data, rework and dependence on specific people who "know how things work".

A system is a response to that. It is not necessarily software — a well-designed process is also a system. Software does have one advantage: it externalizes structure. Rules that once lived in someone's head begin to exist as code, data and explicit workflows.

Perhaps that is why the boundary between my technical and intellectual interests is thinner than it seems: studying technical systems and studying human systems are variations of the same effort — understanding how parts relate and where structure fails.