The Network is King - Breaking Smart Summary (14/20)
A very good day to you all! Hopefully you're all set to drink in the latest and greatest from my summary of Venkatesh Rao's Breaking Smart series. This episode helps us understand how the world is being torn apart through two competing systems.
We're building off the last post, which left us with a compelling message: don't ignore obstacles, instead power through them. This is pretty annoying, though. How exactly are we supposed to do that with [insert excuse here]?
The answer every version of that question lies in the nature of our increasingly interconnected, software-enabled world.
First off, we need to acknowledge that our newly networked world of hardware and software is not a one-size-fits-all bandaid. Sometimes the logical, abstract, and quantitative can seem poorly suited to the tradeoffs we live with every day.
We are just fleshy organisms running around trying to make a living, after all. But that does not mean we stop asking the hard questions. Those are the only things worth pursuing as we make our mark in the world.
And when you're trying to do something that matters, you want to use the best tools. Well, software is a tool that gets better every day. And not just a little bit better, either. It gets a lot better. One simple example is the cost of starting a new business. Through a wide variety of free tools (all powered by software) you can do an incredible amount of work in very little time with a small team.
Don't believe me? Check out over 300 of them.
The creative small teams who exploit software drive innovation. And that innovation increases productivity. With increased productivity, people are free to explore new ways of living.
That's progress, folks.
What do we know about this global network of creatives, linked together through technology? Primarily that this network is the realization of a very old human idea. Something very thoughtful people have discussed for a long time: a single, democratic planetary mind. Software has created a system that lets us directly influence people all around the world.
This global "mind" is a network. The network. We can build all kinds of amazing things on it. Think about Google, Facebook, Uber, Tencent, Alibaba . . . the list could go on practically forever. Huge, important companies that all share two things in common:
- they are built on tech
- they didn't exist 20 years ago
The network that spawned these companies did not emerge in a vacuum. It's replacing an earlier system. This older system was built slowly over last few millennia, and it was built to maximize stability and predictability. You may recognize some of its most important parts: countries; universities; and ideologies.
There's a metaphor I love that describes this perfectly: the self-licking ice cream cone. The thing that exists for itself. Just keep on keepin' on.
Anyway, the point is that this older territorial system is becoming obsolete. The world has upgraded to a lightning fast network system that is ruthlessly focused on innovation and progress.
The story is more complicated, of course, and that's why the next post will be written. To explain what's underneath the hood of this shift to the network.