Just a fancy term for economics?

Several articles and posts have been published recently about the potential demise of the internet as we know it. This one from the BBC says that by 2010 we may already be experiencing slower downloads and more frequently failed transactions. Since 2008 is only a little over a month away, a failing internet two years from now seems like a pretty big deal to me, especially since I'm having so much fun with this brand-new blog.

But as a closet Promethean (whoops), I probably won't be losing a lot of sleep on this one. I'm not sure if the term is widely used, but Prometheans are people like Julian Simon who basically believe that human ingenuity will allow us to get it together and figure shit out. I still consider myself something of a borderline Promethean, though, since ... well, I just haven't been around very long. Additionally, I think the term itself might come from people who look at Julian Simon and other pro-growth economists and scoff, so I don't know if I should be comfortable slapping myself with the opposition's label. Whatever, too late.

Anyway, I strongly believe that humans will sort out this internet crisis before it becomes a serious problem. Seems to me, people like John Doyle over at CalTech will have the situation under control. Carl Zimmer's article in Discover Magazine explains Doyle's experience, ideas, and even some of the toys he's already been working on (like the one that runs fast enough to send every word from every document in the Library of Congress across the country in 15 minutes). It's a nice piece.

Needless to say, much of the information being processed by Doyle and his colleagues is way, way over my head. I have no idea how something like the internet can possibly function properly. Who's responsible for taking care of the servers? How can people work on changing and improving the entire internet when people like me already have such seemingly in-depth access to it? How can the internet really be defined as one single entity when there are so many ISP's, servers, websites, and users? Obviously, I have no idea. I don't even know if these questions make any sense.

What I do know is that the types of insanely complicated, seemingly chaotic networks on which Doyle is an expert are much more obvious than the article makes them seem. The author gives examples like E. Coli bacteria and the inner workings of the human body, comparing them to the internet in their ability to constantly expand and adapt while remaining unbelievably intricate without the aid of any obvious regulators or outside influence. Their trade is defined as follows:

"Control theorists, roughly speaking, try to understand how complicated things can run efficiently, quickly, and safely instead of crashing, exploding, or otherwise grinding to a halt."

Sounds an awful lot like markets, no? I wonder if control theorists study free exchange, the system by which huge societies make themselves every day more robust in terms of wealth and complexity. Perhaps they travel to Hong Kong, a place where each transactions between individuals are appallingly simple, and yet the island's interactions with itself and the rest of the world are nuanced at a level beyond the powers of human observation.

Nah. Probably a bunch of statists.