Coordination

Planted 02023-05-23

Many failures of civilization are failures of coordination. Coordination is hard. Coordination is required. Step changes in coordination happen with step changes in the stock or flow of 1) shared context, 2) communication bandwidth, and 3) role clarity.

Coordination = f(Shared Context × Communication Bandwidth × Role Clarity)

Velocity ∝ Coordination × Resource Activation × Execution Efficiency

Exploring AI Agents through agentuity made something click for me: AI will enable a step change in velocity via step changes in 1) the smooth, timely, and effective execution of interdependent actions, 2) the amount of available energy, people, tools, and capital actually deployed and 3) How much output you get per unit of resource applied.

Large limiters in coordination are

How much and how fast context can be exchanged, and
How well responsibilities and expectations are understood

Weights on terms are environmentally dependent (e.g., military vs. remote startup vs. family).

For example, Inferential distance between two people with respect to an item of knowledge is the amount of steps or concepts a person needs to share before they can successfully communicate the object level point. This can be thought of as the missing foundation or building block concepts needed to think clearly about a specific thing.

A core foundation of communication bandwidth is

Signed and spoken language
Writing and symbolic languages (e.g., english alphabet, math symbols)

Specific languages makes expressing some things easier and other things harder. Rel: No Silver Bullet, Kill math.

The power to understand and predict the quantities of the world should not be restricted to those with a freakish knack for manipulating abstract symbols. — Brett Victor, April 11, 2011

(Sidenote, check out Dynamicland)

One might define

Effective Coordination = (Shared Context × Role Clarity × Communication Quality × Feedback Timeliness) ÷ (Delays + Friction + Misalignment + Limiting Factors)

Other technologically driven step changes

Calendars
Printing press
Typewriter
Electricity
Telegraph and Telephone (Morse code)
Email
Local networks
Digital calendars
Digital files
Web Browsers and Hypertext
Online Chat and Instant Messaging

A brief history

This section is generated by 4o Deep Research.

Language: The First Coordination Tool

Signed and spoken language allowed humans to share detailed information and plans, enabled cooperative hunting, division of labor, and the formation of social norms. Groups could transmit knowledge (e.g. about food sources or dangers) and coordinate their actions in real-time, leading to the development of larger, more organized communities. Language provided a shared symbolic system that bound individuals together, facilitating trust, teaching, and collective problem-solving. This ability to communicate abstract ideas and intentions laid the groundwork for all later collaborative tools.

Writing and Early Symbolic Systems: Memory Across Time and Space

The invention of writing (first in Mesopotamia with cuneiform) revolutionized coordination by freeing communication from the limits of immediate time and place. We now had durable records. Early writing systems – from Sumerian clay tablets to Egyptian hieroglyphs – allowed humans to record information, laws, transactions, and stories outside the human brain. Instructions and knowledge can now be preserved and passed to people far away or to future generations, greatly expanding the scale of cooperation. Written records enabled complex bureaucracies and the administration of cities and empires by keeping track of taxes, inventories, and plans. Writing solved the problems of memory and distance that oral language struggled with.

Symbolic Systems and Collective Organization: Alongside writing, other symbolic coordination systems emerged. Numeral systems and accounting methods, for instance, let merchants and officials coordinate trade and resources with precision (e.g. Sumerians used clay tokens and numbers to manage grain storage). Calendars are another early tool – ancient societies developed calendars to coordinate agricultural activities and ritual events across the year, creating a shared temporal framework for large groups. By 3000 BCE the Sumerians had a calendar dividing the year into 12 months and the day into set periods – a clear example of a symbolic system that synchronized community behavior (planting, harvesting, festivals) with natural cycles.

The Printing Press: Mass Communication and Shared Knowledge

The next leap in coordination came with the printing press (Gutenberg, 1440s). Printing enabled the mass production of written material, drastically lowering the cost and time to replicate a document. Before printing, spreading information relied on hand-copied manuscripts (slow and error-prone) and thus knowledge was confined to a privileged few. After printing, books, pamphlets, and newspapers could circulate widely, standardizing information and making knowledge accessible to the masses. Literacy rates rose, a “public sphere” of discussion emerged, and people in different regions could coordinate beliefs and actions by reading the same texts. Printed scientific journals allowed researchers across Europe to build on each other’s work, and printed flyers helped organize political movements (the Protestant Reformation spread in part through printed pamphlets). The printing press thus “transformed… markets, businesses, nations, schools, churches, governments, armies, and more”, connecting and changing people in ways never before possible. It preserved knowledge more faithfully and standardized information, creating a common reference point for far-flung communities.

Telegraph and Telephone: Instant Long-Distance Communication

For millennia, the fastest communication was as fast as a horse or ship could carry a letter. The electric telegraph (developed in the 1830s–1840s) changed that virtually overnight. For the first time, messages could be sent across vast distances in near real-time (using Morse code over wires). The behavioral impact was immediate and wide-ranging: railroads could coordinate schedules and prevent accidents by telegraphing updates ahead of trains; businesses could get market and price information from distant locations instantly, making commerce more efficient. By 1866, a transatlantic telegraph cable connected America and Europe, making the telegraph a truly global medium of coordination. News spread almost as it happened, creating the first sense of a “global village” in communication. The telephone (patented 1876) then added voice to instantaneous communication. People could discuss and plan in real time across cities or continents, a radical improvement in collaboration for both personal and organizational contexts.

Decisions that once took weeks by mail could be made in a quick call. By the early 20th century, telephone networks spanned the globe, and even the first mobile phones emerged by the 1970s, further liberating communication from fixed locations.

These inventions changed human coordination fundamentally – no longer did one have to be in the same room (or even the same country) to have a live conversation or to organize a complex activity. They laid the groundwork for the faster-paced, widely distributed teams and communities that characterize modern society. (Radio and broadcast media: In the early 20th century, radio (and later television) introduced one-to-many communication that could simultaneously reach millions. While not interactive like telephone, broadcast media created shared real-time experiences – for example, people across a nation could coordinate around a radio announcement or feel united by listening to the same news. Governments and organizations used radio for mass coordination (from war efforts to emergency alerts). These media expanded collective awareness and synchronized large populations, further shaping collaborative behavior on a grand scale.)

Early Digital Collaboration: From Mainframes to PCs

As computers emerged mid-20th century, pioneers began exploring their use for human coordination, not just calculation. A landmark moment was the “Mother of All Demos” in 1968, where engineer Douglas Engelbart demonstrated a computer system explicitly designed to augment human collaboration. In a single live demo, Engelbart’s team showed off revolutionary tools: real-time text editing (word processing), document sharing, hypertext linking, graphical interfaces, and even early video conferencing. The audience had never seen anything like it – this was a blueprint for how digital tools could empower group work. Engelbart’s philosophy was that computers could “help people learn, collaborate and tackle complex problems” by providing a shared workspace for ideas. His prototype system foreshadowed many of the coordination tools we use today, illustrating how a networked computer could serve as a communication hub, knowledge repository, and collaborative writing tool all at once.

By the late 1970s and 1980s, computers moved from research labs to offices and homes, bringing digital coordination tools to a broad user base. Early word processors and spreadsheet programs emerged on personal computers, changing everyday work practices. Word processing software (such as WordStar in 1979) made writing a fundamentally more collaborative and iterative process. Writers could create documents on a computer screen, easily revise and reorganize text, and save or merge changes without retyping entire pages. This malleability of text encouraged more revision and input from multiple contributors (who could now work on successive drafts electronically). By the 1980s, word processors had become common, and people were “writing and editing in fundamentally different ways” than before – with far less friction to edit or perfect a document. Critically, digital text could be shared via floppy disks or over new networks, which meant colleagues could collaborate on the same document file sequentially. The behavioral shift was that producing a report or proposal became a team exercise, with rapid turnaround of edits and a polished final product. As one retrospective notes, word processing made it “easier to draft, edit, proof, and publish documents” and provided “more and easier ways to share information,” whether by printing multiple copies or sending files electronically.

In 1979, the first spreadsheet software VisiCalc was introduced on the Apple II. This tool had a transformative impact on group planning and decision-making. Spreadsheets turned the computer into a user-friendly canvas for financial models and data analysis – a “visible calculator” where changing one number would automatically update all related figures. Tasks that once required tedious manual recalculation could now be done in seconds, allowing teams to collaboratively explore scenarios (budgets, forecasts, project plans) with unprecedented speed. VisiCalc became known as the first “killer app” of personal computing, “turning the microcomputer from a hobby for enthusiasts into a serious business tool”. Managers and analysts in the 1980s quickly adopted spreadsheets to coordinate complex projects: multiple departments could share a common financial model, each contributing data that the spreadsheet consolidated. This interactive number-crunching dramatically improved collective productivity in business, as it enabled data-driven coordination – for example, a finance team could instantly see the company-wide impact of each department’s budgets and adjust in collaboration. In short, the PC era of the 1980s equipped individuals with powerful new tools (word processors for text, spreadsheets for data) that augmented personal productivity and made sharing results with others far easier, fostering a more collaborative workplace.

Email: Asynchronous Collaboration at Scale

Email began as a simple messaging feature on networked computers (the @ sign was first used for ARPANET email in 1971). By the 1980s and especially the 1990s, email had exploded into the mainstream as a principal tool for both business and personal communication. The key impact of email was enabling asynchronous coordination – people could exchange messages and information almost instantaneously, without needing to be available at the same time (unlike a phone call). In workplaces, email rapidly replaced many interoffice memos, letters, and faxes. Teams could discuss projects in threaded email conversations, share documents as attachments, and keep a written record of decisions and tasks. This greatly streamlined workflows, as communication that might have taken days (via physical mail) could now happen in a single afternoon of back-and-forth emails.

By the late 1990s, businesses were using email as a primary coordination tool, finding it invaluable for cross-departmental and cross-geographical teamwork. A manager in New York could send instructions to a team in Tokyo and have their replies by the next morning, bridging time zones. Email also scaled to large groups: one message could easily be sent to dozens of people, keeping entire teams “on the same page” with announcements or updates. Culturally, email fostered a habit of more frequent, informal communication between colleagues compared to formal letters – decisions became collaborative dialogues rather than top-down orders on paper. Outside of work, personal email connected families and friends across distances, strengthening social coordination (e.g. planning events or simply maintaining relationships) regardless of location. By the early 2000s, email was essentially a daily necessity for most professionals, and it laid the foundation for the always-connected, information-sharing culture of the internet age.

Digital Calendars and Scheduling: Coordinating Time

Managing when things happen is as crucial as managing information. Digital calendar tools emerged alongside email and office software, turning what used to be a physical day-planner into a sharable, intelligent schedule. Early electronic calendar programs on PCs allowed individuals to input appointments and reminders, providing alerts so that nothing was missed. The real collaborative breakthrough came when calendars became networked: shared calendaring systems (like those in corporate email clients or later, cloud-based calendars) allowed people to view each other’s availability and coordinate meeting times with ease. Instead of a flurry of phone calls or memos to schedule a meeting, one could simply check colleagues’ busy/free times or send a meeting invite that would appear on their calendars. This significantly reduced the friction of organizing group activities.

Behaviorally, digital calendars made scheduling a more automated and transparent process. Teams could synchronize their work schedules, plan projects on a common timeline, and set up recurring checkpoints with minimal effort. Reminders and notifications ensured everyone was on the same page about deadlines and appointments. Over time, calendar tools became more sophisticated – offering features like timezone conversion (useful for global teams), resource booking (reserve meeting rooms automatically), and even AI suggestions for optimal meeting times. All these features meant that the overhead of coordination – figuring out who is available when – was dramatically reduced. By the 2000s, many organizations relied on shared calendar systems as an indispensable coordination backbone, where employees could almost reflexively know the team’s schedule and adapt to changes in real-time. In essence, digital calendars improved collective time management, making it easier for groups to align their efforts and avoid conflicts or delays.

As work went digital, the notion of “filing” documents shifted from cabinets to computers. Early personal computers introduced hierarchical file systems (folders/directories) to let users organize their digital documents logically (e.g. by project or topic). The first general-use hierarchical file system appeared in the late 1960s on mainframes, and by the 1980s, operating systems like MS-DOS and Macintosh had familiar folder structures for users. In practice, an individual’s computer became like a personal library of files (reports, spreadsheets, images, etc.), with intuitive folder names. This made retrieving information much faster than sifting through stacks of paper – one could simply search or navigate to the right folder. However, in the early PC era each person’s files were mostly isolated on their own machine (or on floppy disks), meaning collaboration still required manually exchanging files (printing them or handing over a disk).

With the spread of local area networks (LANs) in offices, it became possible to share files over a network. Companies set up shared network drives or file servers where many users could access the same files. This was a game-changer for coordination: now team members could contribute to a common pool of documents without tedious physical exchange. For example, a “Shared Projects” drive might contain all files for a project that everyone on the team can read or update. During the 90s, a new folder shows up on the office desktop: the shared drive… For the first time, you can catch a glimpse of other people’s work without having to ask anyone in advance. That visibility meant knowledge became more collective – an engineer could learn from another’s document simply by browsing the shared repository. Shared file management also reduced duplicated work because people were working off the same documents (though it introduced version-control challenges – e.g. the infamous “document_final_v3_reallyfinal.doc” problem). Overall, digital file management and sharing enabled persistent, organized knowledge bases within organizations. Teams could build archives of their work that new members could later access, ensuring continuity. By putting information at everyone’s fingertips and simplifying distribution, these tools improved efficiency and consistency in collaborative work.

(This evolution continued into cloud storage in the 2000s, where services like Dropbox/Google Drive took shared folders online, allowing access from anywhere. In doing so, files themselves turned into hyperlinks, and multiple people could even edit the same file concurrently in later solutions – further eroding the barriers to collaboration. But even the early networked file systems of the ’90s were a huge step in coordinating group knowledge.)

Web Browsers and Hypertext: The World Wide Web of Information

The invention of the World Wide Web (1989–1991 by Tim Berners-Lee) brought hypertext to the masses and created a new paradigm for information sharing. Hypertext is text with links (hyperlinks) that connect to other pieces of information; it was envisioned decades earlier as a way to mimic human associative thinking in a computer system. The web browser – a software tool to navigate hypertext documents on the internet – turned this concept into an everyday experience. By the mid-1990s, anyone with an internet connection could use a browser (like Mosaic or Netscape) to access a vast “web” of interlinked pages on virtually any topic. The behavioral impact was enormous: suddenly knowledge became globally discoverable and shareable in a decentralized way. Individuals, teams, or entire institutions could publish web pages that anyone in the world might find and read, without gatekeepers. This leveled the playing field for communication; a small community or project could coordinate and share updates via a simple website or wiki and reach a worldwide audience.

For collaboration and coordination, the web had multiple effects. First, it served as a universal information repository – project documentation, schedules, and knowledge bases moved to intranet web pages or internet sites, where all participants could always get the latest version. No more chasing down the “latest manual” in a binder; the web version could be updated in one place for all to see. Second, hypertext’s non-linear linking fostered new ways to organize collective knowledge. For example, the creation of Wikipedia (2001) as a hypertext encyclopedia allowed thousands of volunteers to asynchronously coordinate on building a knowledge resource, each article richly linked to others – a form of global collaborative writing unimaginable in a purely linear medium. Third, web browsers enabled new kinds of online applications for teamwork: web-based email, forums, and later project management tools all leveraged the browser as a common platform. In summary, the Web dramatically improved collective productivity by connecting people to information and to each other. It reduced information silos, since a simple hyperlink could point anyone to the needed resource, and it encouraged a culture of sharing (open-source software, knowledge forums, etc.). Hypertext and web browsers essentially wove humanity’s knowledge together, allowing any individual’s contribution (a post, a page, a dataset) to become part of a globally accessible network that others could learn from or build upon.

Digital hypermedia tools, such as hyperlinked multimedia documents and presentations, further enriched collaboration. Teams could share not just written pages but diagrams, videos, and interactive content through hypermedia systems. For example, a design team could create a hypermedia document linking project requirements text to prototype images and demo videos – all navigable in one interface. This integrated approach improved shared understanding and allowed more holistic collaboration. Hypermedia concepts were also present in early collaborative software like HyperCard (late 1980s) and in educational CD-ROMs, which let groups navigate information in a non-linear way and annotate or branch as needed. The collective impact of hypermedia was to make communication richer and more engaging, thereby enhancing coordination especially in fields where visual or auditory context is key (such as engineering, architecture, or multimedia production). It anticipated the fully multi-modal collaboration platforms of today, where a project workspace might include text docs, spreadsheets, slide decks, videos, and chat – all hyperlinked together. In essence, hypermedia tools expanded the canvas of collaboration from plain text to all forms of media, enabling teams to share ideas in whatever form conveys them best.

Online Chat and Instant Messaging: Real-Time Distributed Conversations

As internet connectivity grew, people sought ways to communicate in real time with groups online. Internet Relay Chat (IRC), introduced in 1988, was a pioneering tool that allowed multiple users to have live, text-based discussions in virtual “channels.” Unlike email, IRC was synchronous – you typed a message and others in the channel saw it immediately, enabling a rapid back-and-forth conversation as if in the same room. IRC was explicitly designed for group communication in forums called channels (though it also supported one-on-one messages and file sharing). Throughout the 1990s, IRC networks became hubs for interest-based communities and remote teams. Notably, IRC “grew to become a hub for free and open-source software communities, providing a place for collaboration and support.”

Developers of Linux, for example, coordinated through IRC channels on networks like Freenode – discussing bugs, writing code together, and making decisions in an open forum of participants scattered around the world. This was a new mode of collaboration: the virtual chat room, where geography meant nothing and merit meant everything (people earned respect by their contributions in the conversation).

The collaborative impact of such chat tools was significant. They created a sense of shared “workspace” that persisted over time – one could pop into an IRC channel and instantly ask the group a question or update others on progress. This immediacy sped up problem-solving and fostered camaraderie among team members who had never met in person. It also made organizations more responsive; for instance, customer support or operational teams began to use internal chat to coordinate quick responses to issues. By the late ’90s and early 2000s, simpler instant messaging (IM) clients (AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, etc.) further popularized one-to-one and small-group real-time chat, bringing the expectation of instantaneous reply into everyday work culture. Behaviorally, chat shifted certain collaborations from formal meetings or lengthy emails to quick, iterative exchanges, mirroring casual spoken conversation. It paved the way for today’s persistent group chat tools (like Slack or Microsoft Teams) which are now central to coordinating in many workplaces. The lineage is clear: from IRC channels to modern chat apps, real-time text communication has enabled distributed teams to maintain continuous, lightweight collaboration and a shared awareness of each other’s status and needs.

The future?