Material related to networks but also related fields such as complexity, cybernetic systems, etc ...

Key Quotes

"Noise, then, is not a menace to order, but a rich background of random associations that provide open potentialities for novelty. Rigid crystallization locks a system into one form in which change is not possible; it can only repeat itself ad infinitum, ad nauseam. The mother-daughter pair will clone themselves forever in an eternal steady state ... but the appearance of the deadly and dying male disrupts all that through the introduction of loss and noise. A chaotic system in which noise draws a system from one basin of attraction to another is, however, a more complex system in which evolution and novel emergent states become possible. In the case of the spirochete, we encounter the most basic distinction of dividing the one into two by halving."

- William Irwin Thompson [1]

The missing sea between the Islands of Coherence

"The sea between the islands is the missing work of this generation.

There is no shortage of islands. The regen movement has them. The conscious technology movement has them. The psychedelic science community, the ecovillage networks, the animist practitioners, the regenerative economists, the mycologists rewriting our understanding of intelligence through the wood wide web. Coherent, serious, doing work that matters. The field is full of islands.

The work of tending the sea is real. It is also rare. And the people doing it are not yet in relationship with each other."

- IoC [2]

Networks aren’t an organizational type; they’re a state of coupling

"It’s a field of interconnectivity within which organizational types (collections of particles/bound functions) operate. Currently, it is a solvent that breaks down organizational types by creating new edges, breaking them down into constituent functions, and forcing rapid phase transitions.

Due to the impact of networks, we’re moving from an ordered system that produces persistent sociopolitical systems to an unordered one where resonance becomes a source of transient order.

In the past, we created sociopolitical order by combining organizational types (tribes, markets, and institutions). These organizational types kept their structure when you combined them. You can add a bureaucracy to a tribe and still have a tribe (feudalism). You can put a bureaucracy in a market by creating a firm. That’s gone. You don’t just add a network. Networks are an overlay that changes the phase of the organizational types within it: how they hold together, what they retain/shed, and what they can lock onto (as the organization’s purpose)."

- John Robb [3]

Key Resources

Key Articles

* Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, describes the difference between decentralization and distribution, distinguishing how it is applied logically, architecturally, and politically: https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentralization-a0c92b76a274

Key Books

• The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks. by Joshua Cooper Ramo. Little Brown, 2017