Saturday, August 16, 2003

We're All on the Grid Together

We're All on the Grid Together

The price of efficiency is connectivity and interdependency. The modern world is a deeply enmeshed set of interacting relationships. They can be twisted and pulled, broken and torn, but they reconnect. They are sticky and self-perpetuating. They limit the power of even the most powerful entities, such as the government of the United States or the leadership of Microsoft, to exert their will.

Ultimately, this interconnected entity begins to take on an identity, a gestalt, even a "will" of its own. Just as organelles became cells, and cells become organisms and organisms became sentients and sentients begat communities begat cultures and so on.

All surviving entities, by the iron statistical rules of natural selection, are optimized for self-perpetuation. This mass of interconnections likely shares this trait. It will "seek" to grow and increase its organization -- in a traditional self-organizing fashion.

More fun things to watch. From a distance!

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