Now that I read this again, this sounds like object-oriented programming,
object-oriented design, etc. The driving principle of OO design is that
the universe is composed of "objects" with "interfaces" to one another.
Engineers have been using OO design for a long time in their circuit
boards, they just look up a cookbook of commonly used component layouts.
More recently, these methodologies have been applied to software. In
software, one also has the notions of inheritance and polymorphism, for
instance that a "cat" is a kind of animal, a "lion" is a kind of cat, and
that an object may be valent between lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!) The
latter requiring multiple inheritance.
OO metaphors always break down at some point, though. Much of the world is
not so easily compartmentalized into discrete objects... you get caught up
in representing the boundaries of the object, the relations to the other
objects, and pretty soon you're not really working with a compartmentalized
"object" anymore. By extension, I'd expect the methodology of "switches"
as applied to urban architecture to break down at some point.
Cheers,
Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery@blarg.net> DEC Commodity Graphics
http://www.blarg.net/~vanevery Windows NT Alpha OpenGL
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