Have you ever heard of the term the butterfly effect? Essentially, it’s the idea that small things have nonlinear impacts on a larger system. To visualize this, imagine that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world causes a typhoon somewhere else. It’s a pretty good tool for visualizing that something seemingly small and inconsequential often has an impact on the larger whole. This theory is closely associated with the work of mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz, but we can use it to talk about world-building and technology.
One of my friends gave me this example: Imagine that you’ve created a world in which