I was taken with this cybernetic description of an aircraft factory from sci-fi author Bob Shaw (in his collection Tomorrow Lies in Anguish).
An aircraft factory is a machine for producing aeroplanes and it may be disastrous to attempt to improve production by piecemeal tinkering with individual departments - one must seek out in all its ramifications, and destroy, the machine for stopping the production of aeroplanes, which lurks like a parasite within the organisation.
• Bob Shaw, Pilot Plant (1966)
It shifted my pov. I can now imagine that a system - a factory, an organisation, an ecosystem - is autonomous, its own entity, and I am there to facilitate and to garden.
