Network Logic - Index of

Network logic
urban communities, regulate global financial markets or combat
networked terror.
So now we live in a world held together by networks, but lacking
the language to solve its common problems. We’re left with a sense of
unease – a governance gap that needs to be bridged. This book brings
together some of the leading network thinkers and practitioners to
help us to do just that.
A new logic
Manuel Castells, in his afterword (see chapter 17), points out that we
are paying so much attention to networks now because of computerisation;
it is electronic connections that have made the network such a
ubiquitous and public organising principle. But as both Fritjof Capra
and Karen Stephenson argue in their essays, these forms go far
beyond the digital. Networks embody a set of fundamental principles
for the ordering, distribution and coordination of different components,
whether chemical, natural, social or digital. Network principles
help to explain not just the distribution of wealth in monetary
economies, but also the distribution of molecules in cellular systems.
If we can recognise and detect these patterns more accurately, we
could learn to use them for organisation and decision-making, to
make possible new forms of coordination and collective action.
There is already a huge appetite for understanding the ‘hidden
connections’ in the world around us, as the combined book sales of
our authors would testify. But we are some way from being able to
structure organisational and public power in ways that really take
advantage of network potential. As Capra puts it, we need new ‘design
principles for our future social institutions’.
Whether it is harnessing the distributed processing power of
millions of networked computers as John Taylor envisages, or using
Robert Sampson’s penetrating analysis of crime in the modern city to
activate problem-solving neighbourhood networks, there are
opportunities and challenges for governments, businesses and
citizens alike. Meeting them means redefining many of the principles
that currently hold our world of public institutions and assumptions
12 Demos