# Niche Construction **Domain:** Evolution / Ecology / Human-Machine Systems **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Foundational ## Definition **Niche construction** is the process by which organisms modify environmental conditions and thereby alter selection pressures affecting themselves, descendants and other organisms. ## Human and Machine Context Human agriculture, cities, medicine, institutions and media are intensified niche construction. They change mortality, reproduction, learning and social selection. [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] argues that computing continues this lineage by exteriorizing memory, inference and increasingly the environment in which cognition develops. When niche construction crosses the skin through neural interfaces or persistent machine mediation, environment and cognitive architecture become difficult to separate. The receiving substrate is not passive: it selects what can be represented, remembered and acted upon. ## Governance Context Niche construction distributes power across generations. Designers create environments future subjects cannot choose before entering. This creates duties of reversibility, pluralism, access and protection against lock-in. ## Key Insight **Intelligence does not merely adapt to an environment; it increasingly inherits environments built by prior intelligence and becomes responsible for the selection pressures it creates.** ## Sources / Provenance - Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman, _Niche Construction_, 2003. - Marcus Feldman publication profile: https://profiles.stanford.edu/marcus-feldman ## See Also [[wiki/Human Ecology|Human Ecology]], [[wiki/Cognitive Exteriorization|Cognitive Exteriorization]], [[wiki/Co-Creative Substrate|Co-Creative Substrate]], [[wiki/Transition Architecture|Transition Architecture]]