LoD

An OSE-founded term that stands for Level of Degeneracy.

LoD 500 refers to the Degeneracy of the technosphere as reduced to the 500 most important functional modules that make up all of the machines and devices that civilization uses to provide a modern standard of living. In other words, it is the 500 modules that make up all the machines that are used to build the infrastructures of civilization. This is the equivalent of the Periodic Table for the composition of matter from about 100 elements, except that LoD 500 referst to 500 primitives that make up all machines and devices.

The point of this is to reduce the complexity of the technosphere to the underlying patterns that allow a competent individual to learn all applied technology in 4 years.