FINDING HOPE
T he key to our making progress is to begin. Hope lies in getting started. In his book, Out of Control, Kevin Kelly asserts that gov- ernment should: “Do simple things first. Learn to do them flawlessly. Add new layers of activity over the results of the simple tasks. Don’t change the simple things. Make the new layer work as flawlessly as the simple. Repeat, ad infinitum.” How can we do this in our age of complexity? When everything is connected to everything, everything happens at once. When everything happens at once, wide and fast moving problems simply route around any central authority. Therefore overall governance must arise from the most humble interdependent acts done locally in parallel, and not from a central command. A mob can steer itself, and in the territory of rapid, massive, and heterogeneous change, only a mob can steer To get something from nothing, control must rest at the bottom within simplicity. When the sum of the parts can add up to more than the parts, then that extra being (that something from nothing) is distributed among the parts. By distributing knowledge and decisions we truly gain control from the bottom up. Order begets order. Success breeds success. Thus we must cultivate increasing returns. Each time you use an idea, a language, or a skill you strengthen it, re- inforce it, and make it more likely to be used again. Confidence builds confidence.
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