Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm

This illustration is lifted from this talk by John Seely-Brown. It’s a nice illustration of how Moore’s friends are more potent than he is.

The order of the last term in that illustration, the value of the emerging network of connection, is very much still in dispute. Metcalf’s law? Reed’s law? Something else entirely. It is a question of what the systems that emerge above the network substrate look like; their topology. It’s a question about group forming. How much centralization, how much diversity, how many groups a single player participates in, how many firms an industry contains.

I’ve been playing with the thought that maybe this is about the outcome of the singularity. If the order of that term is smaller then the machines win; if it’s larger then mankind wins.