Response to Rhizome Network Defense Strategies

Rhizome Network Defense Strategies
Network Defense, Rhizome Society, The Way
I find this all fascinating.

I believe it to be very important.

First it speaks the name, describes and then advocates anew something that is very ancient indeed and very important.

Despite having such a past it nevertheless has always, with good reason, remained seen but unseen. It is the time I feel to speak its name. It can no longer be blocked. This blog is doing this. Jeff Vail's book is the manifesto for doing it as effectively as possible.

Till now it has been very much like what Isaac Azimov called Seldon's Second Foundation, unseen and at the other end of the universe. However it is there and visible just not seen.

Its significance and the approach to it was set out very clearly 2500 years ago by Lao Tzu's in the "Tao Te Ching":-

Acting Simply
True leaders
are hardly known to their followers.
Next after them are leaders
the people know and admire;
after them, those they fear;
after them those they despise.

To give no trust
is to get no trust

When the work's done right,
with no fuss or boasting,
ordinary people say,
Oh, we did it.

Secondly I believe that the rhizome society advocated is coming into being naturally. It can do with the nurturing it is getting in this place. It is still quite young but I think now robust enough to mature seen.

Blogging is a key element of this. Blogging becomes even more significant when automatic translation becomes the norm - it is already important. Connectivity is then possible at very great cultural distances, Hofstede would say "psychic distances".

Multi-lingual blogs mean people at their own level in their own area of interest and in their own way can decide who to connect with. They are. Their is even a kid's site to facilitate this for the very young.

I myself like to consider such connectivities as "social wormholes" by analogy with astrophysics. They provide a very short fast route between people who are otherwise far apart nationally, culturally, geographically and temporally.

Related to this but separate was a study I was involved in shortly after 9/11 on commercial intra-networking in financial institutions in the City of London. This had nothing to do with resilience post terrorist attack.

This showed that for economic reasons ever fewer staff were allocated office space in their corporations downtown City HQ offices - too expensive. Instead they hot desked, one desk for every ten staff.

Staff were given laptops and told to work from wherever they were, home, travelling whatever. This meant that if Al Qu'aeda were to strike any of these corporations they could not destroy more than 10% of their human or knowledge base of capability.

This was done for bottom line reasons totally unconnected with resilience against terror.
25 years ago I myself ran across a brokerage firm on Wall Street who had a typing pool in Cork in Southern Ireland simply because the per square foot cost of a secretary there was 1/50th of that in Manhattan.

In addition a trained, high quality, totally happy, unflustered by commuter travel, well educated, Southern Irish, typist came in at 40% of a New York typists wage.

Finally that supreme test of robust command and control in the face of horrendous attrition is war. The military despite modern technology still use "orders groups".

In these orders are given verbally to everyone. If this is done and it is nowadays within the framework of what is called "mission command". Everyone knows the ultimate mission so the fight can continue effectively despite huge attrition in the apparent command hierarchy.

What does still stop such intellectually sophisticated armies is a lack of physical re-supply. This could in the end be the nemesis of the knowledge age without a rhizome culture.

If we do run out of physical resources this probably spells the end of human existence on this planet. I think not. We are already beginning to adopt the rhizome model advocated here.