Systems
An annotated collection of 3 books & papers on systems, spanning 1962 to 2008. Featuring works by Herbert A. Simon, Melvin E. Conway, Tom Vanderbilt — each with editorial commentary oriented to digital product practice.
The Architecture of Complexity
The companion paper to Simon's books already in the library. Here Simon argues that complex systems evolve faster when they are hierarchically modular — "nearly decomposable" — because subsystems can evolve independently…
How Do Committees Invent? (Conway's Law)
Conway's 1968 paper states a law that has turned out to apply to software, hardware, and almost every other designed system: "organisations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the…
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
Vanderbilt uses driving as an empirical lens for complex systems: how individual behaviour aggregates into traffic patterns, how feedback loops produce congestion, how well-intentioned interventions often make things wor…