Just to add to your point regarding my comment… Starting conditions are rules. Say, you were to play a board-game with no starting rules, no dice or paper money but just with four people around an empty blank board. You would hear a lot of talk at first but basically you’d have people deciding on:
a) what’s the goal, the purpose of the game?
b) how do we play the game? The game rules.
c) how do we agree on the game rules?
d) Are we having fun? Is this worth playing?
In a small group, you could find a consensus after some time. You would have a playable game through “pseudo-democracy”. The most creative mind “leading” the group in accepting a game system developed through collective brainstorming. There is always an “intellectual” leader for the reason that, indeed, we are not zombies or cylons. Intelligence makes might.
If you were to replicate the experiment with a different group of four, you would obtain a completely different game with a completely different set of rules in more or less time.

You can extend this experiment to a larger network. Now, you bring 100 players in the room. Just getting people to talk in order would be in itself a huge challenge. You’d probably have to wait until some guy started punching in the face anyone refusing to listen to him. It seems that the larger the group, the more of a violent nature it develops usually around one leader. (As the French say: “La loi du plus fort est toujours la meilleure” or, in this case, Might makes Right.)

Our challenge is to have the most creative mind, intelligence, lead this very large group as, unfortunately, the rules of the board game will not spontaneously appear.

Therefore, before the large group assembles, we need rules to organize it. In order to come up with the rules of the board game, we need to come up with rules to organize the network. These two sets of rules have nothing to do with one another. This is the great “eye above the pyramid” challenge of cybernetic providence.
a) Who writes the rules that organize the large network?
b) How are these rules enforced?
This is the democratic challenge. If you ask the large network itself to come up with its own rules, you are back to square one. i.e Might makes Right. It’s a vicious circle where intelligence rarely prevails.

To organize the large network, somebody, or a very small group of “intelligent” people, has to step out, write the rules and find a way to have them accepted. (Take a dollar bill out of your wallet and look at what’s on the other side of George Washington…)

In our era of the Internet, large scale networks represent a revolution because:
a) the players are physically isolated, yet, in the same room.
b) they can “choose” to enter the room, join the network, . i.e. to play the board game.
c) they can review and accept the cybernetic rules that govern the network before they join.

These conditions allow for 100 or 1000 or 10000 or more players to come up, efficiently, with a common playable board game. (Through collective intelligence, another topic, it may even be the best board game ever invented!)

But the fact remains that the fundamental power behind the network’s system remains with the “eye above the pyramid”. Whoever that might be…

Michelle, it is a great metaphor, glad to hear someone else enjoyed it too. How did you come accross the book?

Twowan, interesting point about “noise” being the starting point and needing rules to achieve order. Are there cases where the rules can arise through their own accord? Maybe it depends on starting conditions.

I also had a chance to read the book and found it to be quite enlightening.

I enjoyed using such an outrageous scenario as a metaphor for complete economic disaster and would also recommend the book to my friends.

Cheers,

Michelle