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post-centralized
Tuesday, September 18 2001
Simply out of force of habit, as I was going to work this morning I accidentally went down to the Grand Army Plaza Red Line station instead of the more distant 7th Avenue Q station. When I realized my mistake, I shrugged and figured I'd ride the Red Line as far as it would go and transfer as necessary. Amazingly, though, the train went the entire route to my destination in Chelsea. This meant that it passed very close to the site of the World Trade Center. Along the way it went through several stations without stopping, including Park Place (the main World Trade Center stop), Chambers Street, and Franklin Street. All the closed stations looked to be in good shape, although some had pools of standing water in them. They must have been thoroughly scrubbed since the disaster because they showed no signs of dust.
the post-centralized world and how Osama bin Laden resembles Napster
In the course of pondering the recent terrorist attacks on American targets, I realized that it signifies an important shift in the behavior of people within world civilization. This shift has been away from large centralized structures towards smaller, increasingly autonomous (but interconnected) structures. An interesting thing about this shift is that, in terms of progress, it's almost counterintuitive. Civilization has always been about increasing amounts of centralization: bigger cities, bigger governments, bigger jet planes, taller skyscrapers, etc. But now we've begun to see these big institutions break down and disperse: everything from mainframe computers to the Soviet Union have been reduced and scattered. The internet, satellite-assisted technologies, and the increasing power of semiconductors have greatly facilitated this dispersal. Those left behind by these trends, living and working in big buildings within big cities and flying around between them on big airplanes, are vulnerable to tiny decentralized cells of suicidally murderous terrorists. Communicating across vast distances, these terrorists have access to like-minded engineers and "project managers" who have discovered ways to take our centralized expenditures of energy and turn then against our centralized concentrations of people and wealth.
It's interesting that Osama bin Laden, the supposed head of such an effective terrorist network, is holed up in Afghanistan, perhaps the least-governable piece of real estate on earth. No continent except Asia is large enough to host such a place. No other continent has such an intersection of massive impassable mountain ranges and brutal deserts. Such a place is a prime headquarter location for a modern information-age pirate. (Too bad Napster wasn't headquartered there!) Osama bin Laden's wealth and human network are so dispersed that they cannot be found and, though (as an individual) bin Laden himself is inherently centralized, he can make himself nearly impossible to find in such a landscape. But even if he is found and killed, the network can live on. It doesn't require a central controlling authority any more than a file sharing network does. Our only hope is that there are overwhelmingly more people interested in trading music than in killing themselves as a means to injure the Great Satan.
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Centralized:
The World Trade Center
The Pentagon
The people and valuables of the United States of America
The Central Intelligence Agency
The American Military
Conventional power generation
Public education
CNN
The damage inflicted by a conventional or nuclear weapon.
Clear Channel Communications
The Recording Industry of America
Napster's (now useless) database
Salon's writing staff
Orthodox religious dogma
Microsoft software development
Space exploration
Amazon.com
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De-Centralized:
The Internet
Osama bin-Laden's terrorist network
The people and "valuables" of Afghanistan
Illegal drug manufacturing and importation
The causes and results of poverty
Home-school education
The damage inflicted by a biological weapon or computer virus.
Napster users
Napster clone databases
Slashdot's writing staff
Scientific knowledge
Human DNA
Linux software development
Drug experimentation
Ebay.com
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 Contribute your own thoughts on centralization/de-centralization
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Gretchen and I ate dinner at La Taqueria in Park Slope, the only Mexican place I've been to in New York that can make a competent California-style burrito. (The other day I'd gone to a place on 8th Avenue and 23rd called La Fresca and was alarmed to discover that their burritos suffer from the same spina bifida anomaly as the burritos at Taco Express). Before the food was prepared, I went across the street and bought a six pack of Brooklyn Pilsner. They don't have a problem at La Taqueria with people bringing their own beverages.
We sat beneath the huge mural on the part of the La Taqueria wall not covered by posters (there's even one of Che Guevera). The mural depicts a somewhat inaccurate and thoroughly Hispanified panoramic view of Los Angeles. Today, though, a large part of it (including the HOLLYWOOD sign) lay hidden beneath a large gold-trimmed American flag.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?010918 feedback
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