Every Multiboard component snaps into one of two hole types: small (25mm grid) or large (50mm grid). The ratio is fixed — 2×2 small units equal 1×1 large. Configurability here comes from constraint, not variety. Everything fits everything else because there are only two ways to connect.
Seattle’s grunge scene in the early 1990s ran on the same architecture. The connection types were few: proximity (everyone lived within miles of each other), shared grief (Andrew Wood’s overdose in 1990 freed his bandmates to recombine into Temple of the Dog, which became Pearl Jam), rehab (Mike McCready met his Mad Season bassist in a treatment center), and shared stages. Maybe thirty musicians, four ways to connect. When a configuration broke — a death, a breakup — the parts didn’t scatter. They recombined through the same interfaces.
The system that produces the most arrangements is the one with the fewest connection types. A pegboard with one hole size generates more configurations than one with thirty, because universal compatibility makes every combination legal — Seattle’s scene worked the same way. The apparent explosion of creativity was a small inventory cycling through a narrow set of connections, each new band a rearrangement.
Hardware calls this modularity. The scene never named it. “Scene” might be the better word — it captures the spatial constraint that makes recombination inevitable rather than designed.