cosmic farmland

cambrian explosion
& fractals

mental models for what's ahead.

i make sense of things by chasing analogies

reason about them. see what fits. see where they break.
too far out? yeah. come along.
tell me i'm full of shit. that's when we learn.

cosmic farmland

cambrian explosion

~540M years ago. ~20-30M year window.

what happened

sudden, rapid changes after billions of years of squishy blobs.
environment shifted → variety exploded.
most experiments died. survivors → ancestors of everything alive today.

nature got weird

anomalocaris

circular mouth. grabby appendages.

opabinia

five eyes on stalks. claw on a nozzle.

hallucigenia

worm with legs on one side & spiky spines on the other.

these are "body plans." nearly everything failed.

anomalocaris: 3-foot apex predator with circular pineapple-ring mouth and grabby appendages — anomalocaris

opabinia: five eyes on stalks, backward-facing mouth, claw on a long flexible nozzle — opabinia

hallucigenia: worm with legs on one side, spines on the other — hallucigenia

three ideas worth borrowing

unpredictable

combinations

all the bets

unpredictable

we don't know what will win.

surprising successes emerge.

combinations

remix is invention.

little of this, little of that.

all the bets

most fail. most die.

keep making bets.

what this asks of us

don't try to converge too early.
we can't predict, so place many, many bets.

environment just shifted. again.
most will fail. a few will define the era.

nature's playbook

apply it.

let's get weird.

cosmic farmland

fractals

repeating pattern at different scales.

romanesco broccoli: self-similar spiraling green florets at every scale — romanesco

lung bronchial tree: recursive dendritic branching from trachea to bronchioles — lungs

mandelbrot set: classic mathematical fractal in orange and black — mandelbrot

zoom in, zoom out. same shape.

see it once → recognize it everywhere.

fractal #1: software development

story → feature → epic → initiative → company-wide work

same break-it-down, build-it-up shape at every level.
sometimes parallel. sometimes sequential. always recursive.

fractal #2: feedback loops

start → implement → validate → gather feedback → iterate

pr loop. release loop. retro loop. postmortem loop.
same "try, observe, adjust" flow.

fractal #3: people

individual → team → group → org → company

widening lens. same dynamics at every scale.
impact > busyness at every level.

implication

practices that work at one scale likely work at others.
failures at one scale give insights into failures at others.
see it once. see it everywhere.