Most human complex technological artefacts are kind of broken into subsystems. Electrical subsystems. Control subsystems. Mechanical systems. Hydraulics. Etc. Often you will have a capacitor sitting there for its electrical properties, with none of its other properties being used in any interesting way.
You don’t usually get an electric motor, except its coil of copper is actually a coiled heat pipe being used as a heat sink for some other component, and its iron cores are used structurally. And its coils have been shaped to resonate with some other part of the system, allowing it to broadcast both information and some energy electromagnetically to some other component. You certainly don’t get tech where every component is doing that sort of thing.
Is this about what designs physically work best, or what its easiest for a human to design?
I vote for “easiest to design”, plus “less expensive” (as you need a lot of custom parts to pull it off), and sometimes more repairable (e.g. loosely-coupled modules can be swapped out more quickly).
At my old job we made extremely space-constrained and weight-constrained precision sensors, where price was no object, and did things vaguely like you mention plenty (e.g. parts that were simultaneously functional and structural, all subsystems intermingled together).
Certainly not always, though. If a mirror has a demanding spec on its mirror-ness, then you shouldn’t use it to channel heat or stress (which compromises flatness), better to have a separate part for that. Just like the “purchase fuzzies and utilons separately” post—a dedicated mirror next to a dedicated heat-sink is probably much better in every respect than a single object performing both functions.
It’s about what is being optimized. Evolution optimizes for cost:reproduction-benefit of path-dependent small changes, so you get a lot of reuse and deeply interdependent systems. Humans tend to optimize for ability to cheaply build and support.
So “easiest to design”, but really “easiest to manufacture from cheap/standard subassemblies”. Note that human-built systems have a lower level of path-dependency. Evolution requires that every small change be a viable improvement in itself. Human design can throw away as much of history as it likes, as long as it’s willing to spend the effort.
Most human complex technological artefacts are kind of broken into subsystems. Electrical subsystems. Control subsystems. Mechanical systems. Hydraulics. Etc. Often you will have a capacitor sitting there for its electrical properties, with none of its other properties being used in any interesting way.
You don’t usually get an electric motor, except its coil of copper is actually a coiled heat pipe being used as a heat sink for some other component, and its iron cores are used structurally. And its coils have been shaped to resonate with some other part of the system, allowing it to broadcast both information and some energy electromagnetically to some other component. You certainly don’t get tech where every component is doing that sort of thing.
Is this about what designs physically work best, or what its easiest for a human to design?
I vote for “easiest to design”, plus “less expensive” (as you need a lot of custom parts to pull it off), and sometimes more repairable (e.g. loosely-coupled modules can be swapped out more quickly).
At my old job we made extremely space-constrained and weight-constrained precision sensors, where price was no object, and did things vaguely like you mention plenty (e.g. parts that were simultaneously functional and structural, all subsystems intermingled together).
Certainly not always, though. If a mirror has a demanding spec on its mirror-ness, then you shouldn’t use it to channel heat or stress (which compromises flatness), better to have a separate part for that. Just like the “purchase fuzzies and utilons separately” post—a dedicated mirror next to a dedicated heat-sink is probably much better in every respect than a single object performing both functions.
It’s about what is being optimized. Evolution optimizes for cost:reproduction-benefit of path-dependent small changes, so you get a lot of reuse and deeply interdependent systems. Humans tend to optimize for ability to cheaply build and support.
So “easiest to design”, but really “easiest to manufacture from cheap/standard subassemblies”. Note that human-built systems have a lower level of path-dependency. Evolution requires that every small change be a viable improvement in itself. Human design can throw away as much of history as it likes, as long as it’s willing to spend the effort.