Systems are Speculative
Why Change Management is Utter Nonsense
Complex systems are everywhere. But they aren't things that people can completely design or control from scratch. As greater numbers of people start using a complex system, it grows like topsy, adapting in ways that are always unplanned.
Take the Short Message Service (SMS), for example. This is a classic case of a system evolving in totally unexpected ways. Over time, the widespread adoption of SMS, and then MMS, led to the emergence of new communication norms, including abbreviations and emojis, which influenced digital communication styles. This adaptability in response to user needs, along with technological advances, exemplifies how systems can evolve autonomously, often in directions that were not anticipated at their inception.
Systems have a horrible habit of transcending what's on paper, often screwing up what we want them or expect them to do. They are self-regulating, formed and shaped through relationships, processes, 'local' rules, and the merging of a variety of forces that aren't just simply about what we intend. That's what makes mosy systems complex rather than just complicated.
Take capitalism, for example. It wasn't created in a boardroom or by greedy warlords plotting together. It emerged gradually through history's disorder—from material conditions, storage methods, land enclosures, slavery, shipping routes, market behaviours, and how goods moved across oceans. That's why we can't just turn it off with new policies or radical willpower. Democracy is the same. So is the internet.
Democracy wasn't born fully formed from the writings of philosophers or constitutional conventions. It emerged hesitantly through a series of historical accidents, social movements, institutional adaptations, and cultural evolutions. Athenian experiments with direct participation, the Iroquois Confederacy's new governance structures, Magna Carta's constraints on power, colonial town meetings, and revolutionary upheavals all contributed to its messy stuttering development.
Modern democratic systems bear little resemblance to their theoretical blueprints. They've evolved through the tension between competing interests: the push and pull between elites seeking to maintain control and broader populations demanding representation; between centralized efficiency and local autonomy; between majority rule and minority rights. Democracy emerged not from a single design but through ongoing adaptations to crises, technological changes, and social movements.
Take voting systems, for example. They evolved from vocal votes among property-owning men to secret ballots, from racial and gender exclusions to expanded suffrage, from paper tallies to electronic voting. Each change responded to specific pressures without anyone fully anticipating how these elements would interact in a larger system.
Democratic institutions continue to adapt in ways that demonstrate resilience in the face of complexity. These become evident in its feedback loops, like how campaign finance influences legislation, which then affects economic inequality, which shapes political participation; how judicial interpretations constrain legislative possibilities, which impacts executive actions, which influences judicial appointments. No single actor controls these cascading effects, which is why calls to fix democracy through one single change or reform to the system are bound to fail.
When interventions attempt to establish a different order or outcome in an errant system, the system's complexity responds in unexpected ways, typically working around the intrusion or generating new and unforeseen problems. Democracy isn't a machine with parts that can be repaired or swapped out, but an ecosystem with interdependent elements that co-evolve.
This complexity explains why democratic transitions often struggle. Importing constitutional frameworks without the supporting cultural practices, for example, often leads to instability. This is why democracy can't simply be installed; it must emerge through the messy interaction of formal structures and informal norms, legal frameworks and lived experiences, elite bargains, and popular mobilisations. Like every other inherently complex system, democracies have emergent properties that weren't designed but just occur, arising from the interaction of individual actions but taking on system-level dynamics that no one controls.
Democracy's resilience comes precisely from this complexity. It explains how it can adapt through crises, incorporate new demands, and evolve without complete collapse.
The internet is also an example of a complex system. It wasn't created as the global behemoth we know today through some single grand design. It emerged from the collision of military research, academic information-sharing needs, the physical infrastructure of telephone lines, and countless decentralized decisions. The early protocols weren't designed with streaming video, social media, or e-commerce in mind. They were pragmatic solutions to specific technical problems of packet switching and distributed communication.
The system we now call the internet evolved through the interplay of hardware limitations, software innovations, unpredictable user behaviours, regulatory frameworks, and economic forces. From bulletin board systems to early browsers like Mosaic, from dial-up connections to fiber optics, and from static webpages to dynamic applications—each iteration responded to both intentional design and unexpected uses. Tim Berners-Lee couldn't have envisioned TikTok when creating HTML. The smartphone revolution, cloud computing, and algorithmic recommendation systems weren't part of any master plan but emerged through the feedback loops between technology, changing social practices, and market dynamics.
Even the commercialization of the internet wasn't inevitable—it stemmed from specific policy decisions like the privatisation of infrastructure, the opening to commercial traffic, and later the dismantling of net neutrality protections. Meanwhile, open-source communities, hacker ethics, and digital commons gurus created parallel currents within the system. The internet simultaneously became both a surveillance apparatus and a tool for resistance movements, a platform for monopolistic tech giants and a space for decentralized peer-to-peer exchanges.
And it doesn't stop there. This digital ecosystem continues to evolve through cryptocurrency experiments, platform cooperatives, mesh networks in disaster zones, community broadband initiatives, and indigenous internet sovereignty projects. To some extent, the internet's development mirrors biological evolution—adapting to environmental pressures, experiencing periods of punctuated equilibrium, and occasionally producing emergent properties that transform the entire system.
That's why simple calls 'to regulate Big Tech' or 'build a decentralized web' miss the complexity of how digital infrastructures actually develop. The internet isn't just code or a piece of hardware; it's a socio-technical assemblage that includes different practices, economic models, governance frameworks, and cultural norms—all continually shaping each other in ways that defy top-down control or simple redesign.
All of this changes how we should think about 'alternatives' to current systems. If we're looking for a ready-made replacement for a system we don't like or isn't delivering what we had thought we had built or intended, we might actually be incorrectly assuming that we're dealing with a mechanistic contraption we can just swap for a better one. But complex systems are not like that. They're more like the weather: chaotic, unpredictable, difficult to predict, and constantly responding to forces we don't fully understand.
'Exiting' capitalism, democracy, or any dominant system isn't about finding a complete alternative. It's about noticing the small changes that these systems create as they naturally evolve. It's all about paying attention to the smallest disruptions, cracks, and inconsistencies within the system itself. And it’s about interrogating what's occurring that wasn't intended to acquire profound knowledge of how the system is actually functioning.
The question then shifts from 'What's the alternative?' to 'Where's the system already breaking down or changing on its own?' 'What's causing the system to behave in this manner?' 'What paths exist that aren't captured by the main system?' And, more critically, 'Where's the most effective intervention point that will change the energy field of the system in the least disruptive manner?'
Change that involves systems where complexity is evident is an invitation to observe the material realities around us and to dance alongside them. In the final analysis, the only way of knowing how a complex system will behave once you’ve modified it is to modify it and watch how it behaves.