Contrary Brin: Networks and Netwar

“This week I'd like to point attention to an interesting article by one of the smartest guys in Santa Monica, California. David Ronfeldt works for the Rand Corporation, the original 'think tank' which ponders many imponderables for the more far seeing (and currently beleaguered) parts of the federal government. It has been posted on rand's website at
http://www.rand.org/publications/RP/RP1169/.

This paper--written in 2002 and now a chapter in a new book (Environmentalism and the Technologies of Tomorrow, Island Press, 2005) -- speculates about the future of the environmental movement as a function of its increasing use of network forms of organization and related strategies and technologies attuned to the information age. The paper does so by nesting the movement's potential in a theoretical framework about social evolution.

This framework holds that people have developed four major forms for organizing their societies: first tribes, then hierarchical institutions, then markets, and now networks. The emergence of a new, network-based realm augurs a major rebalancing in relations among government, market, and civil-society actors. In the near term (years), there will be continuing episodes of social conflict as some environmental groups press their case, often by using netwar and swarming strategies.… ”