Digital Resilience

3

THE NATURE OF NETWORKS

Knowledge—The First Step Toward Digital Resilience

“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck,” wrote the French philosopher and cultural theorist Paul Virilio.¹ The power of networks is connectivity. The vulnerability of networks is connectivity. But let’s identify our vessel properly. It is not the SS Internet. It is something much older, because networks are much older.

ALL NETWORKS ARE SOCIAL

Back in 1758, the celebrated taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, who laid the basis for the modern classification of biological species, coined a Latin term for human beings: Homo sapiens—“knowing man.” Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, authors of Connected: How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You ...