“We live in the age of networks” – Insights from the President of Pallas Athéné Geopolitical Foundation
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According to GLOBS Magazine, in this modern age, networks are ubiquitous. Anyone who works on a computer essentially relies on a workplace connection to perform any type of task. We also use a network, often the very same information and communication network, to make telephone calls.
When we turn on our personal computers at home on the weekend or in the evening, we log on to the network of networks: the Internet. The energy needed to power these devices comes from yet another network, the electrical grid. Our drinking water and the gas used to heat our homes also come from networks. We also use networks of roads and railways to go visit friends. Modern life could not exist without networks, so the concept of network is often instinctively associated with modernity, while in fact networks have always been pre-sent throughout humanity. Water pipeline networks already existed more than 4,000 years ago in Mohenjo-Daro, and roads, or at least networks of paths and routes, are also as old as humanity itself.
Ubiquitous networks have therefore always been important. But they have become far more important nowadays as increasingly sophisticated networks have emerged and spread in the realm of technology. While networks found in nature developed organically and function almost imperceptibly by themselves, man-made networks must be designed and rendered functional by us.
This requires the understanding of how networks function, as the better we understand them, the be er we are able to create effective structures that support our objectives.
The Growing Significance of Networks
The network-like interconnectedness, linkage and functioning of things has thus become increasingly apparent with the emergence and spread of manmade technical networks. While our nervous system works even if we are unfamiliar with its architecture or functioning, or if we do not even think of it as a network, the same does not hold true for a computer network, which man must build and render operational. Networks multiply our power and our opportunities. Just like a group of people of a certain size can achieve more as a cooperative community compared to a set of individuals thinking and working in an isolated manner, the capabilities and opportunities of our technical equipment are also multiplied when they are configured into networks.
In other cases, the network itself is what gives rise to a function. Just think of the electronics that control cars.
The sensors and controllers located in various points of a vehicle are unable to execute the same functions independently as tied together into a network, when information from various points of measurement can be interpreted as a function of the other values. Engine speed may be high or low depending on whether we are accelerating or braking. In a situation like this, information from various points of the network must be collected and processed to give the right control response.
Once technical designers started thinking in terms of and dealing with networks, an increasing body of network-related knowledge and experience was amassed. With the emergence and spread of technical networks and the rise of network-based thinking, we started noticing networks in other places as well. In order to design and build technical networks, network models had to be developed, in other words, a descriptive language and mental framework had to be created for correctly modeling networks.
With the spread of networks and by leveraging this new knowledge, networks or network-like functioning has been discovered in other areas, as a result of which network models have become decoupled from specific, concrete technology and become more abstract and generally applicable, and a new science of networks has been born and continues to evolve. This step has allowed us to investigate the logic, features and functioning of networks in an abstract manner, independent from the associated technology or other media such as the nervous system. This has allowed us to distinguish the features stemming from network architecture itself from the features inherent to the physical embodiment of the network in the study of network functioning.