CONCEPT
Seed Bank (Reorganization)
The reservoir of dormant capacities from which reorganization draws — richness determines the richness of the recovery.
The seed bank is the reservoir of dormant propagules — biological, cognitive, cultural, institutional — from which reorganization draws its raw material. In post-fire ecosystems, the seed bank is the literal reservoir of seeds buried in the soil, surviving in adjacent unburned patches, carried in by wind or water. In the AI reorganization, the seed bank is the human capacities, institutional forms, cultural values, and organizational practices that the conservation phase maintained or suppressed. Richness of the seed bank determines richness of the recovery: diverse seed banks produce diverse recoveries; depleted seed banks produce impoverished recoveries regardless of how much nutrient is available.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The seed bank concept is load-bearing because it shifts the strategic question from 'how do we react' to 'what have we preserved.' Reorganization cannot create from nothing; it can only recombine what the seed bank contains. The quality of future configurations is bounded above by the diversity of present capacities.
The AI seed bank shows mixed health. On the depleted side, decades of conservation-phase optimization systematically