{"id":5304,"date":"2011-05-27T12:56:36","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T07:03:23","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-05-27T13:07:55","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T07:07:55","slug":"the_network_is_a_structure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/newrules\/the_network_is_a_structure\/","title":{"rendered":"The network is a structure…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…to generate relationships.<\/strong> Networks haul relations the way rivers once hauled freight. When everything is connected to everything else, relationships are rampant. Each variety of connection in a network begets a relationship.<\/span> Between firms and other firms. Between firms and customers. Between customers and the government. Between customers and other customers. Between employees and other firm’s employees. Between customers and machines. Between machines and machines, objects and objects, objects and customers. There is no end to the complexity and subtlety of relationships spawned in a network economy.<\/p>\n

Each of these types of relationship has its own specific dynamics and quirks. And each is nurtured by a particular type of technology. The technologies of jelly bean chip and boundless bandwidth are, in the end, relationship technologies. “We need to shift away from the notion of technology managing information and toward the idea of technology as a medium of relationships,” writes Michael Schrage<\/span> in Shared Minds<\/em>, a book about the new technologies of collaboration. Despite the billions of bits that information hardware can process in a second, the only matter of consequence silicon produces are relationships.<\/p>\n

Of course reputation and trust have been essential in all economies of the past, so what’s new? Only two things:<\/p>\n