Coherence Limits in Rapidly Changing Socio-Technical Systems: A Rate-Competition Framework

This paper introduces a minimal, domain-agnostic framework for understanding coordination failure in rapidly changing socio-technical systems. It models coherence as a bounded dynamical state governed by competition between finite-rate coupling processes (coordination, repair, learning) and background structural drift (technological, institutional, or informational change). The framework yields explicit threshold conditions that distinguish regimes of sustainable alignment from regimes in which fragmentation becomes effectively irreversible over operationally relevant time horizons. Rather than attributing breakdowns to local failures or shocks, the analysis highlights timing mismatches as a fundamental structural constraint. While motivated by socio-technical systems, the framework is general and applies to innovation ecosystems, governance under disruption, and forecasting limits. A cosmological horizon analogy is included solely as a limiting illustration of the underlying rate-competition mechanism.