A nice series of metaphors of what connectedness really means vis-a-vis the Internet (go read the whole thing):
“I see the Net as a world we might see as a bubble. A sphere. It’s growing larger and larger, and yet inside, every point in that sphere is visible to every other one. That’s the architecture of a sphere. Nothing stands between any two points. That’s its virtue: it’s empty in the middle. The distance between any two points is functionally zero, and not just because they can see each other, but because nothing interferes with operation between any two points. There’s a word I like for what’s going on here: terraform. It’s the verb for creating a world. That’s what we’re making here: a new world. Now the question is, what are we going to do to cause planetary existence? How can we terraform this new world in a way that works for the world and not just ourselves?”
Doc riffs futher (cite):
“It’s silly to say, ‘I’m going to get in the middle of this thing and improve it.’ More importantly, [it] needs no mediation. It puts everybody, including The Media, on the outside. This doesn’t mean The Media have no advantages, or that they can’t help terraform the Net’s world. It just means that their business isn’t helping make the Net more of what it is.”
The implications:
- If the above is true, every one of your customers is a point on the sphere.
- So is every one of your employees.
- How can you get out of the way, and enable them to connect to get their respective jobs done?