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showed how groups could suck power into themselves from networks, along invisible lines, and animate themselves as if by connection to electricity. The protesters and terrorists understood power that existed simply because of connectivity. They understood how easy it was to connect. And so they had an instinct that eluded the comfortable men in the palaces. The usual reaction of authorities - Round up the usual suspects - didn’t work because, as Castells noted, “The usual suspects were networks.” You couldn’t arrest a network. 3 Before we can go much further in figuring out how network power might be used - to close up those six worrisome paradoxes, to create massive new companies (or invest in them), to rebuild our politics — ] think we need a picture of sorts in our heads of this new landscape. What does a network look like? How does it’s design affect its operation? Yes, it’s true you can’t arrest a network. But can you say something about how it’s different? Can you spot the parts that are dangerous? When someone like Castells says to us, “Power is moving,” what does that mean exactly? Where is it going? What I want to do now is begin to assemble an image of a network, and to show what that sort of linked design tells us about where we are now and where we're going. Then, with such a picture, firmly in our minds, we can ask just what these networks are for, after all, and how they might be used. It is an old chestnut of historians and anthropologists that power - the ability to make or cause things to happen - is often determined by structure. When | say, “Superpower” I am painting a picture of the international system with a single word. “Highway,” does the same - and tells you something about logistics, trucks, economic power. Or “City.” This is why “org charts” have such a decisive power. Think of the map of power in your family or your office or a nation. Who makes the decisions? Why? The way we bottle up our lives in firms or congresses or universities flavors just about every other decision we make®®. An imperial CEO, prone to visions and control creates a different sort of firm than a boss who moves among his employees nearly as an equal. An army that moves from the top down is different than one that lives, as Mao said of the Chinese guerilla forces that mastered the country against steep odds in 1949, “as if they were fish and the people were water.” Power is always packed into structures of some sort. Emperors, kings, presidents and congresses all reflect certain arrangements. But those arrangements change; power moves. You can see leaders struggle with this constant shifting: Think of the “Englightened Despotism” of the 18 Century as Frederick II of Prussia, Joseph II of the Hapsburgs and Catherine IJ in St. Petersburg each struggled to marry the then-new ideas of liberty with older instincts of control. History is, in one sense, nothing but the tale of the movement of power. Once the idea of an Assyrian king emperor was new, as was the notion of a President or a Pope. History is paced by the arrival of new species of all sorts; and by the death of others. This is as true for institutions as is it for bugs. With this caveat: No one gives up power easily. 88 The way we: See Venkatesh Rao, “The Amazing, Shrinking Org Chart”, on Ribbonfarm.com, May 28, 2015 65 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018297