Open Systems

Two important pieces from the traditional press are worth noting.

First, Sir John Sulston, a Nobel laureate who serves on the Science Commons Advisory Board, has written a persuasive editorial in the Financial Times about the connection between openness and informational justice.

Second, Clive Thompson has a nice piece in the New York Times magazine about the adoption of open systems within the U.S. intelligence community.

Both demonstrate the importance of developing what we might call a "network consciousness". By this I mean an awareness of our own role as nodes in a host of overlapping social and material networks and an awareness of the potential and pitfalls of open systems.