As a start let’s at least fix the weird language of our current foreign policy world: We

As a start let’s at least fix the weird language of our current foreign policy world: We don’t live in what they like to call a “Post Cold War” era anymore. (Who, after all, called the Enlightenment the “post-Feudal era”?) We live in what is probably best called “The Age of Network Power.” A world of connection is responding to a powerful logic of its own. It builds new platforms, sometimes defined by users or by technology or by the way in which currency or weapons move. Melvin Conway’s deep engineering insight was right, the design of networks does affect our real world. Even now itis shuffling us into “convergence” and “divergence” clubs. What is next is the struggle to decide who is in which club. What businesses will win? What technologies? Which ideas? Our only chance will be to learn a new instinct for just how power moves on networks. And it’s to this that we will turn now. 57 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018289