Ka-means

Short essays and working notes on complexity, technology, economics, and the patterns that emerge between them.

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Systems Engineering

Thesaurus of terms from the Engineering category — graceful degradation, cosmos/taxis applied to software, microservices, adaptive systems, and formal specification.

3 min read · April 28, 2023

2023 · thesaurus
Engineering: Designing Conditions, Not Outcomes

The engineer's job is shifting from writing correct behavior to designing the conditions under which correct behavior tends to emerge.

4 min read · April 27, 2023

2023 · Engineering · engineering
Hayek and Prigogine: Two Paths to Order Without a Designer

Neither cited the other. Both described how order emerges from interaction under constraints without an external designer.

5 min read · February 23, 2023

2023 · complex-systems
Complex Systems / Network Science

Thesaurus of terms from the Complex Systems category — scale-free networks, threshold dynamics, contagion models, dissipative structures, circular causality, and spontaneous order as discovery process.

4 min read · December 02, 2022

2022 · thesaurus
Complex Systems: Order Without a Designer

The vocabulary of network science arrived late. The phenomena it describes did not.

4 min read · December 01, 2022

2022 · complex-systems