From SSKE

Every named thing is a resource.

There are four types of resources:

• physical-with-rights (people),
• physicalwith-no-rights (technology, environment),
• non-physical-with-rights (businesses, nations, universities),
• non-physical-with-no-rights (information).

All resources have a lifecycle: a beginning, middle, and end.

All non-physical resources exist as localized or distributed patterns in the physical states of physical resources, and are subject to coding errors (imperfect patterns or interpretations). The variety of a resource describes all possible states of that resource. When two resources interact, variety can either increase or decrease depending on the nature of the interaction.