Society · Coordination
PeripheralHitchhiking#4aae
Unanticipated but needed information travels on channels that already exist for other reasons
Mechanism
Much of the communication an organisation needs is unknown in advance to both sender and receiver, so nobody sends it deliberately. It travels as peripheral content added to conversations held for some other purpose, like a mention of a new hire during an unrelated meeting. Such hitchhiking is efficient only where regular primary channels already exist, which is mostly between closely related teams. Broadcasting everything does not replace it, because broadcast becomes internal spam that people rightly ignore. The idea of hitchhiking information comes from genetics.
Invariants
- Peripheral information flows in proportion to existing primary communication
- Neither party needs to know the information is important for it to be passed
Failure modes
- Assuming direct messaging can carry information that neither party knows is needed
- Broadcasting every change so the organisation drowns in its own spam
- Separating units that will later need each other's peripheral information
Where this came from
Used by
Identity
The name is the hash of the definition. Change a word and it becomes a different pattern.
- Sema ID
sema:PeripheralHitchhiking#mh:SHA-256:4aae5f7610e6e2198a5538e5799e48f642197a750b5376c04d7575bfe56d5cd0- Reference
PeripheralHitchhiking#4aae- Ring
- 1
- Tier
- 2