There is a big shift happening across the world right now – structures that were centralised are now becoming de-centralised, while others are integrating. This is a very interesting progression because it means there is a lot of breakdown happening and a lot of foundations are being shaken to allow enough flexibility for these changes to happen.
We are moving from a structure that has been limited by geography to a structure that is heavily connected, in preparation to move beyond that to a more interdependent and organic structure. The pace of change is accelerating.
The way we think about resources in this connected world is vastly different to the geographical world. Walls and roadblocks cease to exist as you route around them. There is massive redundancy in the network where in the past there were failures in serial supply chain processes. Being able to select from multiple connections means you can choose the path with the least latency.
This structure leads to more connectedness as we try to link with more nodes on the network, more transparency because there is always a way to find out, and more craziness because we finally have access to see that there is so much happening in the world!
Much of the chatter has been focussed on information networks because the internet has been a great example of this, but we can look beyond this to all sorts of resources – such as smart power grids, water pipelines across countries, and the web of things.
Connectedness is here, and it is changing everything.
By Ross Hill - November 20th, 2009 at 5:28pm with 862 views
