1: EMBRACE THE SWARM

The Power of Decentralization

The atom is the icon of the 20th century. The atom whirls alone. It is the metaphor for individuality. But the atom is the past. The symbol for the next century is the net. The net has no center, no orbits, no certainty. It is an indefinite web of causes. The net is the archetype displayed to represent all circuits, all intelligence, all interdependence, all things economic, social, or ecological, all communications, all democracy, all families, all large systems, almost all that we find interesting and important. Whereas the atom represents clean simplicity, the net channels messy complexity.

2009/01/16 7 Comments 0 Links

 

7 Comments

#1 | Fri, 01-16-09 11:09 | Tim

So -- not to get all philosophical on it -- the atom is the end of the Cartesian effort to reduce things to the irreducible, to the certain and immediate, while the network is the countermove, the move towards the mediated, the uncertain and complex? Hegel as the thinker of the network?

 
#2 | Fri, 01-16-09 11:30 | Jeremy

I like this. The world has gotten so complex that we are forced to recognize the fact that we do not, can not, will not be able to understand it.

Ant colonies are great evidence of the power of networks - no individual needs to understand the superorganism, or even understand completely their role in making the superorganism function. The whole can truly be much greater - and different - from the sum of its parts.

 
#3 | Fri, 01-16-09 03:35 | gmoke

The image of the net is the image of Indra's net, in which each node contains a pearl which reflects all the other nodes. This is the physics of a hologram. The image of the net, of Indra's net, is a spiritual image, a sacred image, if you have the eyes to see.

The atom, even as the non-irreducable minimum, is not so simple as an image and certainly not as a reality.

I have been studying Gandhian economics and one of his ideas is that economic transactions can be sattvic, spiritually pure. The recognition of the interdependence of the net may also be conducive to developing sattva, purity.

My raw notes on _Foundations of Gandhian Economics_ (which don't include references to the sattvic dimensions) are at http://www.globalswadeshi.net/forum/topics/notes-from-foundations-of

 
#4 | Sat, 01-17-09 04:03 | Mirco

It's notdecentralization, as the resources we use themselfs are more centralized. Only not within our reach. the correct term would be Delocalization, since we now have the power to utilize any available resource without even knowing its location.

 
#5 | Sat, 01-17-09 07:56 | CT Reader

It's true.

The atom is simple and centralized.

The net is complicated and decentralized.

It's six of one, half dozen of the other.

Nothing is a given. Efficiency (or waste) can exist in either context depending on the people involved.

 
#6 | Tue, 01-20-09 04:54 | Tom Crowl

Agreed!

EMPOWER THE NODES!

http://CulturalEngineer.blogspot.com

From Iqbal Quadir, Founder of Grameenphone:
"If concentration of power has contributed to poor governance, the solution must lie in dispersing power. ICTs empower from below while devolving power from above."

ICT Information Communication Technology

 
#7 | Sat, 03-14-09 05:49 | charles faris

this is a simple and valuable mental shift for me...to begin to see that everything that is viewed atomistically, like the chakra system of yogic thought, can be viewed in terms of a web, where instead of positing a *thing* like an atom or a planet or a chakra, we can instead posit a plexus, an intersection. interestingly, i've been describing chakras in my yoga classes as traffic rotaries, one benefit of living in boston!

thanks for the clue!

btw...were you in on the dec 84/jan 85 wer? the one with the monkey trap on the cover?

 

Leave a comment

Your Name:









Thanks for your comment. The words in the CAPTCHA box come from old book texts that are being scanned and stored by the Internet Archive. By entering the words in the box, you prove you are not a bot and also you help proofread the books. If the sample you see is too hard to read, simply click the recycle button to get another two. Don't forget to put a space between the words.


 

Archives - This site operates under a Creative Commons License.

This is a blog version of a book of mine first published in 1998. I am re-issuing it (two posts per week) unaltered on its 10th anniversary. Comments welcomed. More details here.
-- KK