Organic Networks

Abstract

The topic of organic networks derives from the confluence of two distinct bodies of research that have been proceeding independently in the Media Lab for the past several years — 'Viral Networks', which focuses on the enabling technology underpinning end-to-end, grassroots communications systems, and 'Influence Networks', which encompasses ways that both first-world and third-world societies bend the technology of easy connectivity to suit their own economic, cultural and social interests. While the general method of research in the Media Laboratory (semi-autonomous groups following largely independent research tracks) implies that these two themes are somewhat segregated, their intersection carries implications and lessons in and of itself that are too strong to be ignored — hence this co-ordinated set of papers.