Concept distinctions

Synchrony and Coordination

Are timings aligned, or do actions fit a joint task?

Oscillators can align their phases without completing a shared task.

A handoff may require one person to act after another, with deliberately different timing.

Compare phase alignment with task accuracy: success uses different criteria.

Does the returned effect reduce or amplify the deviation being tracked?

A correction opposes a deviation from a target; delay can still produce oscillation.

A returned effect increases the activity that produced it.

Identify the sign of each link before deciding whether the complete loop amplifies change.

Can outside events affect the system while it uses its own operations?

An event can trigger a response whose form depends on the receiving system’s distinctions.

Isolation removes relevant exchanges across a boundary.

Perturb a receiving system and distinguish an effect from the transfer of a ready-made instruction.

Where is the task performed, and who knows where expertise resides?

People and artifacts jointly transform information needed for a task.

Members maintain a directory of one another’s knowledge and route requests through it.

Break an artifact in the navigation chain, then damage the expertise directory. Compare the failure locations.

Is cooperation organized around a shared object or a local practice of exchange?

A stable shared object supports different local uses and interpretations.

Participants develop enough local language and practice to exchange work.

Change the common schema separately from the vocabulary available for translation.

Would changing one participant change the other?

A shared input can make separate processes move together.

Each participant’s state affects the other’s later state.

Use the identification exercises to compare observation with a controlled perturbation.