ked de

struggling with the impact of globalism, the lure of fundamentalism and the clash of conflicting value systems. The very survival of democracy as a

ulation, provide widespread support for a single regime and reassure people in times of stress. Except for the resulting ethnocentrism, repression of autonomy and stifling of new ideas, such static templates can function well for quite a while. Dictators from Adolph Hitler to Idi Amin owed a good part of their success to their ability

e by fundamentalists, can allow for the adoption and implementation of long-term projects that span generations, even c

es have been reckoning with the impact of cosmopolitanism since even before the first ships crossed the Mediterranean, today's proliferation of m

are as reductionist as the tenets of any fundamentalist religion. In spite of the strident individualism of this brand of globalist rhetoric, it leaves no room for independent thinking or personal choice, except insofar as they are permitted by one's consumption decisions or the way one chooses to participate in the profit-making game. Mistaking the arbitrary and man-made rules of the marketplace for a

trading, exposed corporate capitalism's dependence on myths; stories used to captivate and distract the public while the storytellers ran off with the funds. The spokespeople for globalism began to be perceived as if they were the 15th century Catholic missionaries that precede

learning from natur

s the possibilities described by the language of financial markets. It might not be too late to promote a global

Catholic mass into a congregation of Protestant readers. Thanks to the printing press and the literacy movement that followed, each person could enjoy his or her own personal relationship to te

of non-linear equations, evoked the shapes of nature. One simple set of fractal equations, iterated through a computer, could produce a three-dimensional image of a fern, a coastline

heldrakes theory of morphogenesis, to explain and confirm their growing sense of non-local community. By the mid 1990s many internet users began to see the entire planet as a single organism, with human beings as the neurons in a global brain. The internet, according to this scheme, was the neural network being used to wire up this brain so tha

al reef, for example, exhibits remarkable levels of coordination even though it is made up of millions of tiny individual creatures. Surprisingly, perhaps, the strikingly harmonious behaviour of the collective does not repress the behaviour of the individual. In fact the vast series of interconnectio

fascistic scheme of nature, supplanting the individual rhythms of each member, but a way for each member of the social grouping to become more att

leverage points (a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil leading to a hurricane in New York) was now proven every day by a datasphere capable of transmitting a single image globally in a matter of minutes. A black man being beaten by

ts (people who either ingested substances such as LSD or found themselves inspired by the art, writing and expression of the culture associated with these drugs) found t

s as the 'cyberpunk' movement, which was dedicated to altering reality through technology, together. Only now are the social effects

ems can behave in a fashion mutually beneficial to all members, even without a command hierarchy.

e complex insect society know what to do. It is not a hierarchical system, they don't receive orders the way soldiers do in an army. The amazing organisation of an anthill 'emerges' from the bottom up, in

es scarce or the forest floor becomes dry, the formerly distinct creatures coalesce into a single being. The large mass of slime moves about, amassing the moisture of the collective, until it finds a more hospitable region of forest, and then breaks up again into individual creatures. The collective behaviour is an emergent trait, learn

ated human metaorganism is not to be confused with the highly structured visions of a 'super organism' imagined in the philosophical precursors to fascism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Rather, thanks to the feedback and iteration offered by our new interactive netw

emocracy, political activism and a reinstatement of the collective will into public affairs. The emergence of a networked culture, accompani

next phase in a truly populist and articulated body politic, the sites amount to little more than an opportunity for politicians to glean the gist of a few more uninformed, knee-jerk reactions to the issue of the day. Vote.com, as the name suggests, reduces repre

rked politics lead to a genuinely ne

nce in th

d boil. New decency laws aimed at curbing pornography (which were ultimately struck down) elicited cries of curtailment on free speech. Unsubstantiated and bungled raids on young hackers and their families turned law enforcement into the Keystone Cops of cyberspace and the US Justice Department into a sworn enemy of the shareware community's most valuable members. Misguided (and unsuccessful) efforts at preventing the dissemination of cryptography protocols across national boundaries turned corporate developers into government-haters as well. (This tradition of gove

ons infrastructure. The internet itself, a government project, soon fell into private hands (Internic, and eventually industry consortiums). For just

et creates new reasons for new countries to get their populations online. But an interactive marketplace is not fertile soil for networked democracy or

hem use the keyboard only to enter their credit card numbers and nothing else. The internet that grew from these development priorities, dominated by the World Wide Web instead of discussion groups, treats individuals more

ulture: they focus on short-term ideals, they encourage impulsive, image-driven decision-making and they aim to convince people that their mouse-clicking is some k

gh they may not always (or even frequently) live up to it, our representatives' role is to think beyond short-term interests of the majority. They

promise of net

am media's inability to understand it. Major American news outlets are still incapable of acknowledging the tremendous breadth of the WTO protest movement because of the multiplicity of cooperating factions within it. Unable to draw out a single, simplified rationale that encompasses the logic of each and every protestor, traditional media storytellers conclude that there is no logic at all. (Just as I am writing this section, a newscaster on CNBC, reporting from a WTO demonstrati

o a series of yes or no votes on the issues put before them. They can, however, engage the public in an ongoing exploration and dialogue on issues and their impacts, and attempt to provide a rationale for their roles in the chamber in which they participate. They must accept that their constituents are capable of comprehending legislative bodies as functioning organisms. In doing so, politicians will relieve

en-ended and uncertain process of societal co-authorship. Whatever model they choose must shun static ideol