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In A Peer Network, No One Is Officially In Charge. It Doesn't Have A Command Hierarchy. It Doesn't Have A Boss. So, All The Decisions Are Somehow Made Collectively. The Control Of The System Is In The Hands Of Everyone Who Is A Part Of It.

-Steven Johnson

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In A Peer Network,

Steven Johnson

...

In A Peer Network, No One Is Officially In Charge. It Doesn't Have A Command Hierarchy. It Doesn't Have A Boss. So, All The Decisions Are Somehow Made Collectively. The Control Of The System Is In The Hands Of Everyone Who Is A Part Of It.

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One Of The Founding Moments Of Public Health In The 19th Century Effectively Poisoned The Water Supply Of London Much More Effectively Than Any Modern Day Bioterrorist Could Have Ever Dreamed Of Doing.

It Is Extraordinary How Safe Flying Has Become. You Are Now Statistically More Likely To Be Elected President Of The United States In Your Lifetime Than You Are To Die In A Plane Crash. What An Amazing Achievement As A Society! But What We End Up Focusing On Are The Catastrophic Failures That Are Incredibly Rare But Happen Every Now And Then.

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Who Is Giving The Orders To Ants? No One. They Are Self-organizing. Each Of Our Immune Systems Get Smarter Over The Years As Its Biochemical Parts Share Information, And It Responds With Individualized Defenses, But It Isn't Conscious And It Has No Memory. The Host Of That Party Didn't Decree That Everyone Would Gather In The Kitchen, But It Happened Anyway. Emergence Means We Sometimes Act In Concert For Better Or Worse.

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Chance Favors The Connected Mind.

This Is How Great Intellectual Breakthroughs Usually Happen In Practice. It Is Rarely The Isolated Genius Having A Eureka Moment Alone In The Lab. Nor Is It Merely A Question Of Building On Precedent, Of Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants, In Newton's Famous Phrase. Great Breakthroughs Are Closer To What Happens In A Flood Plain: A Dozen Separate Tributaries Converge, And The Rising Waters Lift The Genius High Enough That He Or She Can See Around The Conceptual Obstructions Of The Age.

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In A Peer Network, No One Is Officially In Charge. It Doesn't Have A Command Hierarchy. It Doesn't Have A Boss. So, All The Decisions Are Somehow Made Collectively. The Control Of The System Is In The Hands Of Everyone Who Is A Part Of It.

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