A new Flickr Favorite by Will Lion.
Full quote: "Changing things from the top down works when things are stable. It’s a very efficient way to do it. But in a turbulent environment the change is so widespread that it just routes around any kind of central authority. So it is best to manage the bottom-up change rather than try to institute it from the top down." Kevin Kelly
The interesting thing is that this was written in 1995 and was talking about organisational structure. However, I think it just as well applies to the Internet now.
Specifically, it ossifies the view that eschews trying to control everything – a largely pointless exercise because the Internet is systemically dynamic.
It’s like planting seeds and then continuously trampling your garden to make sure everything is growing to your precise idea of how it should when just seeding and standing back, returning occasionally to water and weed, will work a lot better.
www.well.com/~bbear/kellyart.html
Uploaded: June 20, 2008 at 10:02AM