Architecting the Great Web

The nation-state is too big. It’s a behemoth. Even our large cities have ballooned to a size many times too big for a healthy, dynamic community at a human scale. These social monsters are just that: monstrosities. What’s more, they’re dinosaurs. The evolution of natural systems (such as unfortunate dinosaurs) gives us a clue of patterns of organization that are effective to a point, but beyond that become cumbersome. Clunky. Inefficient. And soon, extinct.

An evolving system has no other scheme but to test the stress limits of itself and its own boundaries. We’ve tested those boundaries with our nation-sized communities, and I posit that these entities are not proving to be optimal. We’re starting to become aware of problems in a nation 300 million strong; the huge bureaucracy of the United States is unable to attend to the basics of human welfare or the infrastructural basics we need from our government. More than a few thinkers are realizing that the U.S. Constitution is already cracking under the size of this country. While the American tradition of federalism (shared political/legal power between states and the national government) is one approach to localized governance within a larger whole, I believe even American states are too big to serve as a human-scaled governments.

While things are arguably too big already, political science is currently grappling with how our organizational institutions can “scale up” even larger to cope with apparently inevitable globalization. Despite the seeming paradox, I am actually optimistic that some form of global government is possible that can protect normatively good things such as localized diversity of thought, while establishing a baseline of order and standards of human decency worldwide. The question I am interested in is how natural systems theory can help us predict, or even help us architect a new global order in harmony with human-scale communities.

With the disclaimer of my somewhat broad, but certainly limited awareness of the various factors at play, let me describe what I predict will happen. It is impossible to guess when or how exactly the transformation will occur, but I think we will soon begin to forge new forms of local governance within a larger system that I’ll generically call the “web.” I believe local communities will reflect a shrinking back down to human size, and will possess the following characteristics:

-- less than 100,000 people
-- relative self-sufficiency
-- interconnectedness/interdependence with nearby communities (forming the overall web)

Like a scalable network, the interconnected communities will form a web eventually encompassing the entire face of the earth, and still retain a coherence or unity. The local communities/cities will self-govern, but will also be governed by the powerful, normative practices or customs of the web/multitude/network. These cities will be sovereign and autonomous, but the web will serve as the foundation, embodying and enforcing principles that sustain itself. Longevity and continuance will be bellwether, and the social organization that sustains over time will simply prevail. This living web of cities will display amazing diversity within a larger unified framework. McLuhan’s “global village” will manifest as a collective sphere of media and communication (underpinning the global political norms), but no singular culture will dominate as a hegemony. Some form of representative democracy will likely be central to both local and global levels of governance, but I believe the operative foundation will reflect some kind of peer-to-peer autopoietic organization as opposed to a top-down enforcement of “voting rights.” I realize this sketch is too vague at present to be of much use, but there are many thinkers who are expounding on these ideas right now, and I have faith that innovative models will soon be testable and employable, if they aren’t already being tested right now.

Like any natural system, this web will surely be attacked and challenged. But the web itself will respond naturally and effectively. Like cancerous tissue may grow and threaten to harm the body, cancerous agents may poison parts of the web. But, cut off from surrounding cities, the “cancerous” regions will not represent an extreme threat. Like a lone individual cut off from food and water, rogue cities will not long survive without the sustaining network around them. This stands in opposition to the current situation where large nations have enough resources to sustain destructive activity for a frightening long duration. Inter-community conflict resolution mechanisms will probably surface and ebb as needed, along with some form of intermittent Congress to help give form to the evolution of the basic “sustaining” principles of the web.

Compared to the current structure, the web of cities will respond better to nearly all stresses. Climate disasters, for example—a catastrophe for nations with closed borders—should be easily tolerated by a distributed network of communities that can absorb populations easily, dispersed across a region. Populations will be stabilized through the creation of planned sister-communities, seeded as necessary to prevent overcrowding.

Certainly a topic of such scope as I have addressed here entails consideration of many factors. This text represents merely my preliminary thoughts and predictions about our collective future, about a global social body that has yet to be born. I for one believe the birth is near at hand. To the extent that active midwifery may assist in this birthing, I welcome any comments and reactions as to how, beyond working to purify and enlighten ourselves as individuals, we may facilitate this evolutionary process.

February, 2010
Boulder, Colorado

Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelloggphotography/, used under a creative commons license.