Synthestructure
Synthestructure
It is useful to name the major parts of the infrastructure created by a free-market cooperative. The synthestructure is the shared infrastructure created by earlier cooperative work. It is the pier that everyone must share if anyone is to fish. Synthestructure can be abstracted as a tightly woven bundle of synergy threads that has been elaborated over time by the cooperative. Deep synthestructure refers to regions farther in the past, and shallow synthestructure to regions close to the present-day leading edge at which free-market synergy occurs.
Synthestructure enables new growth, but it also constrains growth paths by making the option of creating new, possibly superior synthestructure less attractive. Synthestructure also tends to be self-stabilizing as it grows larger, since the cost of changing it increases both as the number of participants increases (since all must use it) and as the changes move deeper (since deeper changes perturb or unravel larger sections of later synthestructure). The result is an incentive for innovators to focus change and innovation on the leading edge of the synthestructure, and to accept without change some range of non-optimal but adequate (that is, sufficing) features of the shared synthestructure. It is easy to find examples of such trade-offs in cultural and linguistic synthestructures around the world. In Western culture, the merging centuries ago of the Roman alphabet with Indian numerals (via Arabia) created confusing overlaps such as O/0 and l/1 that are far from optimal for conveying information. However, this event is so deeply embedded in the synthestructure of the West that changing it would cause cost perturbations far larger than the relatively minor benefits. Thus, the non-optimal thread is accepted as a given and Western cultural innovation continues onto with more immediate issues.
Software Cooperatives: Infrastructure in the Internet Era by Terry Bollinger, October 11, 2003
