Aaron, the living systems paradigm also offers ecosystems/ecology as a metaphor. I’m not sure that it’s more free of the colloquial trap than DNA, but functionally, it can be a good alternative for introducing the same ideas. Most people I’ve encountered have some sense of speciation, and understand that healthy ecosystems require complexity and diversity to function well & long. Even if they don’t, these ideas are pretty straightforward to introduce (We kill ecosystems’ responsiveness when we manage them for single-metric outcomes. See Southern and Western pine forests, the Amazon, or the Everglades for examples). Further, ecology offers some interesting examples of management techniques (e.g. monoculture v. silviculture v. permaculture) that result in really different impacts, especially when we look at them over time.

And yes, I understand that technically this isn’t really a separate metaphor from DNA, but maybe it’s just looking at the same thing on different indices.

Good discussion, and nice work on the OS canvas. Stoked to see how it works and evolves.