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A Networked World (Part 1) | Azimuth

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The idea that’s haunted me, and motivated me, for the past seven years or so came to me while reading a book called The Moment of Complexity: our Emerging Network Culture, by Mark C. Taylor. It was a fascinating book about how our world is becoming increasingly networked—wired up and connected—and that this is leading to a dramatic increase in complexity. I’m not sure if it was stated explicitly there, but I got the idea that with the advent of the World Wide Web in 1991, a new neural network had been born. The lights had been turned on, and planet earth now had a brain. I wondered how far this idea could be pushed. Is the world alive, is it a single living thing? If it is, in the sense I meant, then its primary job is to survive, and to survive it’ll have to make decisions. So there I was in my living room thinking, “oh my god, we’ve got to steer this thing!” Taylor pointed out that as complexity increases, it’ll become harder to make sense of what’s going on in the world. That seemed

A Networked World (Part 1) | Azimuth Azimuth Home About A Networked World (Part 1) guest post by David Spivak The problem The idea that’s haunted me, and motivated me, for the past seven years or so came to me while reading a book called The Moment of Complexity: our Emerging Network Culture , by Mark C. Taylor. It was a fascinating book about how our world is becoming increasingly networked—wired up and connected—and that this is leading to a dramatic increase in complexity. I’m not sure if it was stated explicitly there, but I got the idea that with the advent of the World Wide Web in 1991,

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