[coldtea]

>If there is a distributed process with countless people and organizations using intricate mechanisms to build components of mechanisms that

And then someone will go on being pedantic and bring forward bees and ant colonies and the like. Let's call it "a matter of degree/scale/breadth" this might shut them up!

[throwaway290]

I was going to point out that it is kind of a spectrum but decided to try and see what I can make of binary differentiation. You're right it's not great, too vague, writing doesn't like that and favors black and white thinking and neat causality chains, but few are able to see it as a limitation of writing as medium instead of how things "actually" are.