Friday, September 14
From "sept11info"
First of all, consider that the destruction of the WTC amounted probably to (tens of
?) thousands of lives and several trillion dollars in property lost. Why was this
possible? Partly because of the extreme centralization that is common to the
industrial era. The Trade Center towers were really a monument to an age that is now
behind us -- an age of extreme centralization common to the industrial era.
We must take this as a lesson that we need to become much more decentralized (more
like Jell-O, if you will). The way to achieve that is to quit building huge brick
and mortar monuments that exemplify the industrial age (such as the Trade Center,
the Sears Tower, etc.), and improve our technology and information infrastructure.
Since we will be building that information infrastructure from the ground up (more
or less) we have an opportunity to do it right. By that I mean, we can incorporate
security safeguards and reliable backup systems. Then we can operate in a truly
decentralized manner that would make terrorist attacks much less devastating and
therefore much less desirable (from the terrorist’s point of view).
First of all, consider that the destruction of the WTC amounted probably to (tens of
?) thousands of lives and several trillion dollars in property lost. Why was this
possible? Partly because of the extreme centralization that is common to the
industrial era. The Trade Center towers were really a monument to an age that is now
behind us -- an age of extreme centralization common to the industrial era.
We must take this as a lesson that we need to become much more decentralized (more
like Jell-O, if you will). The way to achieve that is to quit building huge brick
and mortar monuments that exemplify the industrial age (such as the Trade Center,
the Sears Tower, etc.), and improve our technology and information infrastructure.
Since we will be building that information infrastructure from the ground up (more
or less) we have an opportunity to do it right. By that I mean, we can incorporate
security safeguards and reliable backup systems. Then we can operate in a truly
decentralized manner that would make terrorist attacks much less devastating and
therefore much less desirable (from the terrorist’s point of view).
