A 5 page article in the April 2002 issue of Harvard Business Review explains it all:

The basic inequality in wealth distribution seen in most societies may have little to do with differences in the backgrounds and talents of their citizens. Instead, the disparity appears to be something akin to a law of economic life that emerges naturally as an organizational feature of a network. Bouchaud and Mezard found that if investment returns grow sufficiently volatile, they can completely overwhelm the natural diffusion of wealth generated by transactions. In such a case, an economy can suddenly reach a tipping point, and wealth, instead of being held by a small minority, will condense into the pockets of a mere handful of super-rich robber barons.

If we are not yet at the End of History, are we at least approaching the End of Economics?

Wealth Happens | HBR April 2002

Clay Shirky's mail distribution list for his writings on networks, economics, and culture, and pointers to other interesting work. Frequency is roughly every other week.

Excerpts: The first issue is devoted to the question of communities, audiences, and scale: what effects can we expect to see from growth in the size of online groups, given that the internet supports both broadcast and communal patterns of communication? ... What follows is ... an exploration of one basic but important effect: Audiences scale, communities don't. ... What shape will the blogosphere take? The blogosphere is already resolving itself into a power law distribution ... [which] recreates all the difficulties the original web users had in locating content ... What shape will the blogosphere take? Will blogdex and daypop be enough, or will readers flock towards trusted meta-blogs that filter and organize, or will other models of collaborative filtering arise?

NEC: Networks, Economics & Culture - A New Mailing List

Risk is one of the main features of modern societies. With the Internet, ... increased risk associated with information: free accessibility, interactivity, globality, and connectivity of personal, economical, political and media communication ... On the other hand, ... increased opportunities to secure information ... Does the Internet increase or decrease the risk of a communication breakdown? It has been demonstrated that trust is one of the features in complex modern societies which compensates for risk. ... does the Internet increase trust ...? The questions ... are seen in a much broader context: does Internet communication force a structural transformation of the public sphere?

Crisis Communication and the Internet: Risk and Trust in a Global Media

The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, the foreign policy journal of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy [at Tufts University], publishing cutting edge research, opinion and commentaries on international law, politics, security studies, business, humanitarian affairs, the environment and more!

Here are excerpts from the table of contents for the spring 2002 issue. Some articles are freely available online; others only in print or to subscribers.

"Lessons from the Internet Revolution: Where Emerging Markets Go from Here", by Heather Killen, former VP of Yahoo!;
"Leaders Without Enemies" on the structure of terrorist groups;
"Bombing bin Laden: Assessing the Effectiveness of Air Strikes as a Counter-Terrorism Strategy";
"The United States and China in the Persian Gulf: Challenges and Opportunities";
"Nuclear Uncertainties: The Case for American Leadership in Combating Nuclear Proliferation", by Stansfield Turner, CIA director under Jimmy Carter;
"Sound Vision, Unfinished Business: The Quadrennial Defense Review Report 2001 and the Bush Defense Strategy";
a book review of _Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security_;
and a brief review of _Strategic Warfare in Cyberspace_, a book which I logged here some weeks ago.

The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs | Spring 2002

John Rennie Short is Professor of Geography at Syracuse University.

_Global Dimensions: Space, Place and the Contemporary World_

"At The Arlington Institute, we believe that to understand the future, you need to have an open mind and cast a very wide net. To that end, FUTUREdition explores a cross- disciplinary palette of issues, from the frontiers of science and technology to major developments in mass media, geopolitics, the environment, and social perspectives."

A free newsletter, published every two weeks or so. The latest issue is from 31 Jan 2002. Be sure to check out the archives for details on their projects, such as:

The Macro*Memetics Project - The Design, Leadership, and Transformation of Large-Scale, Complex Systems and Resolution of Major Conflict Situations ... A number of forces are now converging to put even a greater emphasis on finding new and fresh ways to deal with large scale problems and challenges. These "macro" groupings range from whole communities to emerging city-states to multi-layered cultures to far-reaching corporate entities and, of course, to the global meshwork itself. Attempts to apply micro-scale (personal) and meso-scale (organizational) solutions to these interconnected and dynamic macro-scale environments have been "weighed in the balance and found to be wanting." ...

FUTUREdition | The Arlington Institute

"Modern societies face a cruel paradox: Fast-paced technological and economic innovations may deliver unrivalled prosperity, but they also render rich nations vulnerable to crippling, unanticipated attacks. By relying on intricate networks and concentrating vital assets in small geographic clusters, advanced Western nations only amplify the destructive power of terrorists"

... "We've realized, belatedly, that our societies are wide-open targets for terrorists. We're easy prey because of two key trends: First, the growing technological capacity of small groups and individuals to destroy things and people; and, second, the increasing vulnerability of our economic and technological systems to carefully aimed attacks. While commentators have devoted considerable ink and airtime to the first of these trends, they've paid far less attention to the second, and they've virtually ignored their combined effect. Together, these two trends facilitate a new and sinister kind of mass violence -- a "complex terrorism" that threatens modern, high-tech societies in the world's most developed nations."

The Rise of Complex Terrorism | Foreign Policy, Jan/Feb 2002

A good source of daily news and analysis on the top security issues. Today's stories include an NRC report on security at nuclear plants; Baghdad's conditional acceptance of weapons inspections; funding for protection against biowarfare; selection of the Yucca Mountain Site.

NTI was created by former Georgia Senator and Georgia Tech professor Sam Nunn and Ted Turner, founder of CNN and vice chairman of AOLTW.

Global Security Newswire | Nuclear Threat Initiative

I've had David Brin's _The Transparent Society_ on my bookshelf for years now. It's worth re-reading.

"... the trade-offs are false dichotomies ... [Safety and freedom] go together. All it takes is breaking the stupid notion of dichotomies and trade-offs."

... "The number of cameras in private hands is expanding vastly compared to the number owned by government. ... People are profoundly more empowered by technology than hindered by it." [Do I sense a Steve Mann influence here?]

... "The aggregate of people in a given community will catch the local thugs and power abusers through small acts of revelation and investigation. It's the aggregate that's wise."

... "Teens need a sense of being able to get away. Really away."

... "[C]ommon people understand a hierarchy of privacy needs."

Interview: David Brin's Naked Truth About Privacy

This is a book about "Bohemian society" as it was in 1889. The entire book is available in both inline web page images and as PDF page images. It begins:

"In a country house near the city of B---- lived a lady of cultivated mind and manners, "a noble woman nobly planned." Well read and familiar with such writers as Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer and other scientists, and being rather cosmopolitan in tastes, liked to gather about her, people who had -- as she termed it -- ideas. At times there was a strange medley of artists, authors, religious enthusiasts, spiritualists, philanthropists and even philosophers. On the evening of which I write there was the usual peculiar gathering, and each one is expressing his or her views freely and unrestrainedly.

The visionary and dreamer said: 'Let me describe a modern Utopia of which I have often dreamed and thought.'" ...

Bohemian Society, by Lydia Leavitt, published 1889