“The purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment, or sheer ignorance of circumstances.”

― Stafford Beer

If you can’t take a hammer to the black box and see what’s inside, you can look at what emerges from it. Think backwards and a system becomes what it does, not what you want it to do. Does it matter why you built it? Yes and no. It becomes hard to parse. Clearly, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. A heuristic strips away the flotsam– a rule of thumb when exhaustive analysis is unlikely. We make things for reasons, tools to do things. A picture from the mind takes shape in the world. Material, it turns back on us, runs astray. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. What do you use a bedsheet for?  What is the purpose of an image? What does a marsh do?