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Most digital systems are engineered. Some, though, are discovered, because they are based on the laws of the physical world, on some established structure in our brain, or on our social structures. One such case seems to be Notion, a popular software that keeps growing its user base. Notion can be used for personal note-taking, small and large-scale project management, no-code development, and content publication. Some people even use it to keep ADHD under control. It’s a productivity tool, a knowledge base tool, and a publication platform. Once a user moves past its beginner learning curve, albeit steep, Notion proves to be a powerful instrument, with most of its users adopting it to fit their work needs and even in their personal life.
Covering a dazzling array of use cases, the software’s capabilities far exceed any complexity involved in learning the tool.
This is possible through a very simple idea at the core. I call this idea Fractal Knowledge (FK) mode. It is the foundation enabling composability, adaptability, and ultimately the possibility to reconfigure Notion to serve most purposes.
<aside> 👉 The Author
🏷️Simone Robutti
🧠 Data Engineer, Organization Designer, Labor Organizer
📍 Berlin, Germany
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In this article, we are going to explore what the FK is, how it relates to the future of organizations, and how it could grow into something much more powerful thanks to the potential offered by federation protocols.
This is how I usually explain the model to beginners when I teach introductory courses on Notion.
Notion is built on top of three elements:
The rest of Notion is just good UI/UX design and good engineering to turn this concept into a smooth, reliable, consistent application.
<aside> ❄️ In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric pattern that is repeated at different scales in a self-similar way.
In organizational sciences and cybernetics, a fractal organizational structure refers to a recursive or self-similar structure, in which smaller copies of the same structure are contained within larger copies (i.e. Viable System Model (VSM)).
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graph TD
Page --Contains--> Page
Page --Contains--> Block
Page --Contains--> Database
Database --Contains, with properties--> Page
Block --Contains--> Block
Block --Contains --> Page
Block --Contains--> Database
<aside> ☝ Let’s make an example.
Click on this page and explore the nested elements:
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As this convoluted graph exemplifies, most elements can contain the same or other types of elements in recursion. A block inside a page inside a database inside a page inside a database. From this recursive structure derives the powerful composability that everybody loves in Notion. It makes ugly graphs but it makes a great user experience.
Notion is a paramount example of software that can adapt to processes without the involvement of technical people. Users can shape their own processes without calling a programmer, buying a new plugin, or forcing tools like Jira, Confluence, Trello or Asana to do things they will never do properly. This is important because, to some degree, Notion delivers the promises of the “no-code” approach, something that most software in the same category failed to do.
Organization designers in small or big organizations can shape and develop the organization itself using Notion, materializing a holistic cybernetic approach. The tool softens distinct boundaries between software and organization; indeed, due to the characteristics of FK, the result is a much shorter feedback loop between changes to the organization and changes to the software it uses.
<aside> 💡 Anthony Stafford Beer, outstanding cyberneticians, designer of Cybersyn and pioneer of modern organizational science criticized already in the 70s how computers were used exclusively to make old, manual processes and organizations go faster, instead of adapting organizations to the potential of digital tools. Fifty years later, have we really changed our approach?
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It’s not a qualitative change: many organizations could do this with a good integration between internal software development teams, organization designers, and members of the organization. What FK improves is the speed at which this integration occurs; all the while increasing the autonomy of non-technical people and empowering small organizations to shape knowledge management, process, and collaboration. Most small teams are stuck with rigid productivity tools like Jira, Trello, Asana, and so on. FK is a game changer because it introduces an additional degree of abstraction that liberates concepts like page, task, block, project, or calendar from the usual rigid informational infrastructure.
Fractal structures in a sociocratic organization
A global project is ongoing to reshape how we produce, live, connect, and ultimately how we are going to survive the unfolding collapse of industrial society and its systems. Food, energy, logistics, communication, reproduction, and many other aspects of our lives today depend on productive, logistic, financial, informational, or organizational bottlenecks somewhere thousands of kilometers away from where we live.
War in Eastern Europe? No heating this winter. A flood in South East Asia? No GPUs and hard drives. A bank fails in New York? Plenty of companies go bust throughout the world. Naval commerce hubs get overloaded? No more tropical fruit for you. On top of that, in case Taiwan gets invaded by China, in a few months there will be no more hardware replacement for tractors in the USA, industrial robots in the UK and cars in Germany. The system is heavily coupled and brittle. The inevitable growth of local and global shocks risks breaking all interdependent systems in cascade.