CONCEPT
Autogenic and Allogenic Engineers
Jones's foundational taxonomic distinction between organisms that are infrastructure (corals, trees) and organisms that build infrastructure (beavers, earthworms) — determining what kind of maintenance the engineered habitat requires and what happens when the engineer is removed.
Autogenic engineers modify the environment through their own physical structures — the coral's calcium carbonate skeleton is the reef; the tree's body is the forest canopy. Allogenic engineers transform external materials from one state to another — the beaver converts trees and mud into a dam physically distinct from its own body. The distinction is not merely taxonomic. It determines how the habitat is maintained, how the engineering scales, what persists when the engineer is stressed, and what collapses when the engineer disappears. In the AI domain, the distinction separates the tool itself (autogenic) from the organizational structures built around the tool (allogenic) — with entirely different maintenance requirements and failure modes.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Autogenic engineering produces infrastructure that exists because the organism exists. When corals bleach under thermal stress, the reef does not immediately collapse — the calcium carbonate persists — but it begins to erode because the living