Modularity as a basis for innovation: George Heineman at TEDxWPI

Summary

The speaker, a computer scientist, explores the concept of modularity and its crucial role in innovation. By drawing parallels between biological systems and modern technology, the speaker demonstrates how modular design in both fields fosters adaptability, evolution, and new functionality. Examples range from the Cambrian explosion in biology to the development of software stacks in computing. The talk concludes that modularity not only simplifies complex systems but also drives innovation by enabling the creation of new modules and applications.

Takeaways

• 🔧 Innovation is driven by understanding complex systems and their evolution over time.
• 🌐 Complex systems, whether biological or technological, follow a model, specification, and realization structure.
• 📞 The evolution of communication systems, like the telephone, highlights how simple models grow into complex systems.
• 🧬 Biological systems, such as the development of multicellular organisms, offer insights into the principles of innovation.
• 🐦 Adaptation, evolution, and exaptation (repurposing traits) are key biological processes that can inspire technological innovation.
• 🔗 Modularity is a core principle in innovation, where systems are broken into independently replaceable and extendable units.
• 💻 Modularity in software, such as modern app development, allows for flexible, scalable innovation through well-defined interfaces.
• 🫀 Organ transplants demonstrate the concept of modularity in biology, where the heart is a functional unit that can be replaced.
• 📱 Software stacks, like the LAMP stack, are examples of modular components that work together to create more complex, powerful systems.
• 🔬 Biomimicry, or drawing inspiration from nature, shows how modularity in biological evolution can be applied to technology and innovation.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the speaker's talk?

The speaker focuses on innovation, particularly how concepts from biology and modularity can inspire the design of complex systems in technology, such as computing and telecommunications.

How does the speaker relate biology to complex systems in technology?

The speaker draws a parallel between biological evolution, like the emergence of eukaryotic cells and multicellular organisms, and the development of complex technological systems. Both involve modularity and adaptation, allowing for innovation and complexity over time.

What is the importance of modularity in innovation according to the speaker?

Modularity is key to innovation because it allows systems to be independently constructed, extended, replaced, or adapted for different purposes. It simplifies the complexity of systems and enables them to evolve and integrate new functions.

What historical example does the speaker use to illustrate the evolution of complex systems?

The speaker references the Cambrian explosion, which occurred around 540 million years ago, as a tipping point in biological complexity, where many multicellular organisms evolved. This example highlights how modular systems can suddenly increase in complexity and variety.

How does the speaker explain the concept of adaptation in the context of innovation?

Adaptation is described as the ability to acquire new traits, similar to adding new features or functionality to a system. In biological terms, it's like how species acquire traits that allow them to survive, and in technology, it's akin to upgrading systems or software.

What is the speaker’s view on exaptation, and how is it relevant to innovation?

Exaptation refers to traits developed for one purpose that get repurposed for another. The speaker uses the example of bird feathers originally evolving for heat regulation but later being used for flight, illustrating how innovation can arise by reusing existing modules in new contexts.

How does the speaker link innovation in biology to modern technology?

The speaker compares biological modularity, like gene and trait transfer, to modern software and hardware systems. Just as genes can be transferred to different organisms, technological modules (like software stacks) can be reused and repurposed across different platforms.

What example does the speaker provide to explain modularity in technology?

The speaker gives the example of a 'software stack,' where different pre-built software components, like Linux, MySQL, and Apache, are integrated to create a complete system, showing how modular systems can lead to greater innovation by leveraging independent components.

What does the speaker mean by ‘the system becomes a module in the future’?

The speaker suggests that as technology advances, what is currently considered a complex system will eventually be simplified into a module that can be easily integrated or replaced. This continuous shift allows for further innovation by building on top of existing modules.

Why does the speaker believe that modularity is essential for sustaining innovation in complex systems?

Modularity breaks down complex systems into manageable units, allowing for flexibility, extensibility, and the ability to replace outdated components. This structure is crucial for evolving systems to remain functional, adaptable, and innovative over time.

Outlines

00:00

💻 Introduction to Innovation and Complex Systems

The speaker introduces the concept of innovation from the perspective of a computer scientist, emphasizing how training in computer science provides skills to understand complex systems. They discuss how complex systems, both natural and man-made (e.g., biology, telecommunications), have evolved and how innovation is essential for sustaining and enhancing these systems. By comparing biological evolution to the development of modern infrastructure, the speaker highlights the role of models and realizations in the design process, using examples like the invention of the telephone and constitutional governance.

05:00

🪟 Modularity in Systems: From Windows to Innovation

The speaker introduces the concept of modularity in systems, describing modules as units of functionality with well-defined interfaces. Using the example of windows (physical objects), they explain how the properties of modules can lead to innovation. Extensibility, replaceability, and adaptability are key features of good modules. By comparing gothic church windows to modern ones, the speaker demonstrates how innovation arises from modularity and draws parallels between modularity in both biological and man-made systems.

10:01

🦅 Evolution, Adaptation, and Exaptation in Innovation

This section delves into biological principles such as adaptation, evolution, and exaptation and draws connections to innovation. The speaker explains how traits (or modules) developed for one purpose (like bird feathers for heat regulation) can be repurposed for another (flight). They also introduce Gregor Mendel’s hereditary studies as a precursor to the understanding of genes and modularity in biology, likening genetic modification and organ transplants to the modularity concept in biological systems, which fosters innovation at multiple levels.

15:03

🧠 Modularity and Software Innovation: From Telecommunication to the Software Stack

The speaker shifts focus to modern technology, explaining how modularity in software and hardware has led to significant innovation. They explore how systems, like telecommunication networks, evolve through modular components, drawing parallels to biological systems. The concept of the software stack (e.g., LAMP stack) is introduced as an example of how individual, seemingly unrelated projects can combine to create powerful systems. This modularity allows for flexibility, extensibility, and the potential for innovation across industries.

🐍 Cambrian Period, Chordates, and Biological Innovation

The speaker returns to biology, discussing the Cambrian period, when major life forms and body plans (e.g., chordates) evolved, leading to a vast diversification of species. They compare biological evolution to engineering animals with modular parts and suggest that innovation happens when existing modules are separated into simpler units. By simplifying and recombining modules, innovation becomes possible in both biological systems and technological advancements. The speaker concludes with the idea that modularity is crucial to fostering innovation across all fields.

Keywords

💡Complex systems

Complex systems refer to interconnected components that function together to perform complicated tasks. In the video, the speaker describes both natural and artificial systems, such as telecommunications and power grids, as examples. These systems evolve and require continuous innovation to thrive, drawing inspiration from biological evolution.

💡Modularity

Modularity is a core theme in the video, defined as the division of a system into distinct functional units, or modules, that can be independently created, replaced, or modified. The speaker emphasizes that modularity is key to innovation, allowing systems to evolve and adapt over time, similar to how biology adapts through changes in genetic modules like DNA.

💡Innovation

Innovation is the process of introducing new ideas, products, or methods. In the video, innovation is linked to the ability of complex systems to sustain and thrive by evolving modular structures. The speaker draws parallels between biological evolution and technological innovation, arguing that modularity is a driver of both.

💡Specification

A specification is a detailed description of the design and functionality of a system. The speaker explains that every complex system starts with a specification, followed by its model and eventual realization. For example, the specification for a telephone system started as a simple wire connecting two rooms, evolving into today's global telecommunications networks.

💡Eukaryotes and prokaryotes

Eukaryotes and prokaryotes are two major types of cells that differ in complexity. Prokaryotes are simple, unicellular organisms, while eukaryotes are more complex, multicellular organisms with specialized functions. The speaker uses the evolution of these two cell types to illustrate how modularity in biology allowed for the development of complex life forms.

💡Cambrian explosion

The Cambrian explosion refers to a period around 540 million years ago when a rapid increase in the diversity of life forms occurred. The speaker uses this historical event to highlight the importance of modularity, explaining that the emergence of multicellular organisms led to new levels of complexity and self-organization in biology.

💡Self-organization

Self-organization is the process by which a system spontaneously organizes itself without external control. In the video, the speaker mentions how multicellular organisms during the Cambrian explosion developed new structures like appendages and segments through self-organization, leading to greater diversity and complexity in life forms.

💡Adaptation

Adaptation is the ability of organisms or systems to develop traits that improve their survival or efficiency in changing environments. The speaker compares adaptation in biology, where traits are acquired and passed on, to modular innovation in technology, where new features or modules are added to existing systems to enhance their functionality.

💡Exaptation

Exaptation refers to the process where a trait that evolved for one purpose is repurposed for a different function. The speaker gives the example of bird feathers, which were originally used for heat regulation but later became essential for flight. This concept is also applied to technology, where modules designed for one task can be adapted for new, unforeseen uses.

💡Biomimicry

Biomimicry is the practice of emulating natural processes, structures, and systems in the design of human technologies. The speaker discusses how innovations in modern complex systems, like computing and telecommunications, can benefit from studying biological evolution, drawing insights from nature's long history of modular development and adaptation.

Highlights

Complex systems are all around us, both natural and human-made, from biology to modern infrastructure.

The speaker discusses the evolution of biological systems and draws parallels to modern innovation, suggesting we can learn from biological evolution to design complex systems.

Every system has a specification, a model, and a realization that dictates how it functions and behaves.

Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone started as a simple system and grew in complexity over time, showing that every innovation starts from an idea and evolves.

Multicellular organisms evolved rapidly during the Cambrian explosion due to modularity, which led to the development of diverse life forms.

The speaker introduces the concept of modularity as a key driver of innovation, both in biology and in technological systems.

Modularity allows for independent construction and replacement of system components, enabling flexibility, adaptability, and innovation.

Biological systems demonstrate adaptation, evolution, and exaptation—traits that can also apply to technological innovation.

Genes are seen as modular units that can be manipulated to transfer traits, which is the basis of genetic modification and biotechnology.

The speaker draws a connection between organ transplants and modularity, highlighting how understanding interfaces allows for the replacement of functional units.

Innovation occurs at multiple levels—from genes in biology to software and hardware in technology—demonstrating how modularity transcends fields.

Modular systems allow for economies of scale, enabling widespread use and development, as seen with software stacks like LAMP.

The speaker emphasizes that true innovation often involves taking an existing module, separating it into simpler parts, and repurposing it for new contexts.

In both biology and technology, innovation is driven by the assembly of complex systems from simpler, well-defined modules.

The closing premise is that modularity is key to innovation, allowing us to create anything imaginable by breaking down and reassembling systems.

Transcripts

good afternoon uh I'm here to talk in my

capacity as a computer scientist uh on

Innovation and I think that being

trained in computer science gives us

certain skills and i' like to talk about

that

today so complex systems are all around

us and if I go back to my proper slide

these systems have evolved over time of

uncounted Millennia and they have

structure their function their behavior

but increasingly today we are designing

even more complicated infrastructures

telecommunications Power Systems

Computing devices and I think we can

learn something from the way that

biology has evolved over millions and

billions of years to attend to that

task now when I look at a complex system

what I try to understand is what its

function

is like a clicker function and to focus

on this we start with the fact that

every system has a

specification every system has a model

the realization of that system and then

finally what it actually appears like in

practice now the first inventor of the

telephone Alexander granell decided he

want to talk remotely to another human

so it was a simple wire connecting two

rooms eventually that increased in

complexity to what we now know today but

ultimately there's still a realization

of that system that had to First be

envisioned by someone you might have a

need to govern a country so you design a

model framework and then that would be

your Constitution and then it actually

has to be carried out and realized by

people fulfilling different roles in the

109th Congress over there you may look

at life and say well is it really a

specification for a bald eagle do we

really need something to depopulate the

salmon from a stream well in fact the

model of that bird of prey is now stored

in DNA and so I can look that as a model

and try to understand through all these

systems that no matter what happens in a

complex system they need to innovate to

not only sustain themselves but to

thrive

and so we need to do a little history

and in computer science I don't get a

chance to do this much so bear with me

about three billion years ago life

formed on this planet and at the time we

now know those to be procaryotic cells

very simple unicellular organisms they

might form colonies and form association

with other entities but as in all rather

simple life at some point about a

billion years later came the UK carots

and they share so much in common it's

really intriguing from someone outside

the biological field uh looking at it

more from a point of view of information

and structure to see how much they have

in common and of course there are

differences uh some primary ones of the

scale 10 to 100 times larger the nucleus

uh and other specialized functions and

there are many theories as to how this

actually happened I prefer the endi

symbiotic formation theory that someone

suggest that these procaryotic cells

forming close association with each

other somehow became symbiotic and they

formed tighter relationships between

themselves so that the whole is greater

than the sum of the parts and so one

would think well this looks great now

that we have the basis for multicellular

organisms with increased specialization

everything should start to take off now

and we should see the great diversity in

life that we have today unfortunately it

didn't exactly happen and it had to way

to a certain point in time which we know

to be the Cambrian explosion about 540

million years ago and you might read

about this in the scientific literature

or the Scientific American the way I

found it was by Stephen J gold which any

book that he writes is by me um and in

there he describes this period in time

where about 90% of the Life as we know

it on this planet was in this model of

single cellular life and so what was it

what had to happen for that

multicellular life to somehow take root

and form these incredible diversities

well they have theories as scientists to

uh and I'm going to look at this one for

today's talk as sort of a basis for

modularity and why it plays such an

important role in Innovation somehow at

that time within 50 to 70 million years

all the major film on the planet seemed

to evolve the earliest ancestors and the

diverse life forms are incredible they

even have an animal here called hucog

genic they couldn't understand what it

was and at that time the best theory as

to what exactly happened is that somehow

the emergence of all these multicellular

organisms introduced a change context

and the scale changed just enough we've

heard earlier this concept of a Tipping

Point I think it's appropriate here that

these noop physical processes appeared

where before there was just regulation

genes for unicellular functions now took

over in an interesting product way not

just additive but true products to form

interesting New U processes and so the

morphological complexity that you see

appendages layers segments all appeared

from self-organization and so you have

an incredible diversity where it's true

that the whole is greater than the sum

of its

parts to return to a modern context

which is where I find myself more uh I

now need to talk about what a module is

now modules are in software they're in

Hardware but they also are more abstract

as we'll come to see so I'll just say

that a module is some unit of

functionality that has a well- defined

interface with this context so I'll take

a very simple example of Windows every

window is functional you can open it or

close it has certain structure what its

elements are has the behavior it

illuminates the room but could also be

used as a fire escape if you had to

although the The 14th Century window

there was probably not a good fire

escape um and in fact it has certain

elements that they have and if I look at

that rather simple system I try to

identify its functionality structure

behavior and that window in the gothic

church has certain physical properties

that's embedded in the wall uh and

that's very different from the more

modern window you see there and so

modules themselves are just these units

and so what I'm really looking at is

what are the good properties of module

that really change it and make it

something that leads to Innovation so I

broken these up into three groupings we

first start with this notion that if you

have a true module it can be

independently constructed and then

replace at will either by a new version

from the manufacturer or a third party

upstart that tries to replace it you

might have extensibility which we now

know as add-ons or there's an app for

that and you could also think about some

modules that would develop in one

context and you want to use it in a

totally different context that you would

never envisioned and if you look at

these two little window examples um the

window in the gothic church really comes

up poor in all these rankings it's not

replaceable uh it's not extensible there

not much you can do with it but the

modern window has all these really nice

features and while the one thing that

both fail on is this notion of taking a

window and using it in another context

um we will see examples of where that

actually is the case and so what I like

to do is to turn to the biology world

again to start with this notion that

well what we really have are three

distinct themes that we've seen in our

textbooks we'll start with adaptation

the ability to acquire trait and that's

just like a third party add-on and then

if that trait gets absorbed into a

population now you have true Evolution

we replace certain modules across a

wider sphere and finally this last

notion of exaptation which is this idea

that something developed for one purpose

can be taken over for used for another

you may at least be familiar with the

evolution of dinosaurs and birds it

turns out that many believe that bird

feathers were actually heat regulation

devices and then eventually they became

used for flight again a totally

different purpose but one that nature

took very good use of and so when I

think about these things uh let's go

back to genetics so we go to

1865 a monk in brunau in Czech Republic

who's working on his his hereditary

ideas and so he can understand that he

can pass certain traits from one

generation to the next p in this case

through successive breeding regimens

where he has a certain organism the

cultivar on their top right top and he's

got these certain beneficial genes he's

trying to pass on of course at the time

he had no notion that there were genes

or chromosomes he had this idea that

there were traits somehow being passed

on he could observe them without

understanding the mechanism or the

function

and through successive breeding programs

you can indeed have a desired codar that

you would get in the lower right hand

corner or you could take the modern root

biot technology shows that we can use

agrobacterium to transplant DNA

sequences into another organism this is

the basis of GMOs and genetically

modified organisms and so with a very

quick turnaround period you can take a

beneficial Gene that was used in one

totally different context and inject it

into an organism an entire different one

and yet you get the same result all this

is based on the concept of modularity

and without this basis there's no way

that I believe life would be able to

adapt and evolve because it's a

fundamental belief in chromosomes that

the modules are themselves genes but we

can also look at that from a point of

view of a macro perspective um when you

hear about uh organ transplants my first

thought is well they're just hacking the

body they didn't know what they were

doing when they were doing an organ

transplant they just said I wonder if

it's possible and every time I see a

heart transplant which seems so common

now you look at what's really happening

and I never understood how they could do

it because I was envisioning all these

nerve attachments that they had to

reattach but it turns out the human

heart has no external nerves you just

plug it in and then watch it work and so

they understood the interface of that

module and they were able to take

advantage of it to actually introduce

third party Replacements and of course

uh external add-ons like having a dial

pump or even an automatic lung

everything that the biologists are doing

now with this incredibly Rich stuff can

be seen as just I'm going to hack the

body I'm going to find a way to take

this Advantage advantage of this module

and introduce this as well so that

modularity can both be at the micro

model level but also at the physical

level the the larger system and in fact

I believe innovation has to happen at

all three levels otherwise you can't

actually see why you're trying to do the

things you're doing and that's a

specification just imagine every time

you learn a solit game someone said oh

this game is solit is just like Klondike

except you do this so you've got the

basic strategy well I've got my

understanding I'm just going to tweak

some of the rules treat them like a

module cut them out and put something

else in its place or the Constitution

you can just amend it just with a lot of

work but you can do it and then you now

have a new module that's attached to the

greater hole um in the actual physical

systems we can of course replace

function units all the time and again

going back to

telecommunications for the last 40 50

years you could still take a regular Cox

uh plug of a phone and plug into the

wall and you could still have access to

this interconnected uh Global Network

even though the actual hand that hadn't

changed much and what what it shows me

is that when you're looking at a system

of any capacity any level of of

hierarchy you can find modules that

themselves are broken down and possibly

it could be a very complex system itself

but if I treat it like a module then I

don't have to worry about those

complexities and so this principle of

modularity does extend all the way

throughout the entire system that you're

working on so the basic premise of my

talk today is while modularity may not

be the basis for Innovation it certainly

is A1 and and if I take as we now are

there's a term called biom biomimesis I

believe which is try to mimic what

nature does and so if you look at what's

understanding in the world how things

are built well let's go back to my

description of what happened in the

Cambrian time and now take it up to a

modern context now we're building system

for modules each one of which is

incredibly complicated and it's a change

context now on a spatial scale we' never

envisioned Global Communications uh and

Power Systems that are now

interconnected and these novel

computational processes are in fact made

possible because you have all these

functioning modules that are being

assembled in ways that they might never

have been envisioned before and so the

morphological complexity all these

different mobile apps web servers U

mainframe computers all taken advantage

of the fact that they have these great

powerful modules to do their work and so

I don't have time to go into all of

these but I'll just pick some of these

the main Innovation that comes up is

called well when you take a complex

system but in the future is just a

module and so you can kind of see that

the Paradigm of innovation is constantly

moving in that direction once you have a

well- defined interface as we talk about

an art discipline you can create all

these uh economies of scale just think

of all the people who trying to write an

iPhone app once the interface is defined

or prior to that a Facebook app the

second part of innovation that can be

described here is the systems the

softare that is being written and

traditionally as a computer scientist I

grew up writing software on my own

computer and then eventually you

realized you could EXP man it to the

world because of the internet and now

you made it available for anyone to

download and license it used to be the

case that Hardware manufacturers gave

away the software because they wanted

you to buy the hardware well now they

give away the hardware so they can

license you the software and as software

became more and more complex it

developed into this interesting area

called the software stack you may have

heard of the term it's nothing more than

a set of software that comes

pre-installed that has minimal external

dependencies and provides a substantial

function that you can then take and work

with without having to just reinvent the

Wheel from scratch and this gives

unprecedented productivity to our

software vendors I'm going to talk about

one of these you at least should at

least be aware of every time you go to a

website and you buy something in the

shopping cart you're probably using a

lamp software stack that company has

probably built a web server that's

running on top of a machine that's uses

the Linux operating system freely

available and they use maybe the Apache

web server to host those requests they

need to store the data they put into a

database but they don't want to buy one

one they'll just get the freely

available one my Sequel and they need to

do some Dynamic web pages they're not

going to buy something they'll just

program it in Pearl or python or PHP and

so these individual systems were not

envisioned for this this wasn't the

exogenesis of some long-standing idea

they were all individual projects that

just kind of grew up all at the same

time matured at the same time and before

you knew it you had this really

interesting I'm going to say symbiotic

relationship where they're all powerful

but they make the whole even more

interesting and Powerful as it goes

forward and so this LEDs me to try to

tie together these two parts of my talk

one that goes back a billion years and

one that's only 10 years old so in the

biological sciences of these domains

that what I remember from 8th grade and

so you could have the ARA and the

bacteria those are

procariota those are the ukar and

they've got all these great things going

back to lus and even earlier the philm

in the kingdom and it's really almost

romantic so in my mind I'm going to

propose let's have another domain we

call a computar and it repres all of

software and in this domain there are

different kingdoms I know about unia

that's all the software that developed

on a Linux platform and don't forget

mobilia that's what all the handheld

devices are Palm Pilots pdas Apple

iPhones and so in the future perhaps not

the not too distant future we may have

paleo comput much like our

paleontologist now trying to go through

the Forensic Record and really try to

understand well what is that lamp that

was there why was it so important why

did so many uh people use it and they

made may say well that's actually a

philm lampia in the unia kingdom and

it's not too far off from the truth

because if I go back to the Cambrian

Period again where the Coates evolved

somewhere around the 540 million Mark

they devolve this architecture which is

a a body plan that had you know

bilateral uh model and then you got a

head and tail rudimentary vertebrae and

this whole thing it's a very incredibly

diverse species of course but only 4%

are cordat in this and you can see the

vertebrae coming out of that the

reptiles the poor little mammals over

there who kind of come out and dominate

as we now know today and so when I look

at the chordates I see the cordate film

stack this is the way that you would

engineer an animal if you had all these

parts and so I wanted to leave you at

least with one thing because some

innovation of the heart thing the

capture how do you how do you innovate

well Daniel Parnes in our discipline has

identified the following when you're

trying to find a module or create a

module you should instead think about

separating a module that already exists

find a way to separate it up into two

parts so that the module a is actually

simpler because you separated stff out

into B and module B is not necessarily

more complicated and yet you can

Envision using b in a totally different

context and now you've got two modules

where before you had one true Innovation

is what I would say and so I'll leave

you with my final premise as I started

at the beginning modularity is the key

to Innovation and with that uh you can

do anything that you can imagine thank

you very much