The point being made is that it's some mathematical thing, more fundamental than human nature, things that aren't human mediated behave this way too.
Think of the transmission of a disease as the percentage of the population immune to it decreases. Island infections isolated by being unable to reach new susceptible victims fizzle out. But above a certain susceptible percentage, the infection can leap from group to group along the edges where they touch, and it becomes a pandemic.
It's no just that the internet mirrors the real world, although it does. It's that it breaks down isolation barriers in the real world which used to passively defend against the spread of all sorts of unrelated corruption, everything from Nigerian prince scams to bitcoin wallet stealing to nation state disinformation.
>It's that it breaks down isolation barriers in the real world which used to passively defend against the spread of all sorts of unrelated corruption
You've just put into words the loosely formed thought that's been trying to escape my brain. Nature has a mechanism for limiting the positive feedback effect of new corruption forces: geographic isolation. It's as fundamental to diversity as evolution. Think e.g. the species that survive on the Galapagos islands that would otherwise have been wiped out.
The internet has no circuit breaker; no way to attenuate positive feedback cycles amplifying a signal (whatever that signal might be).
I'm no economist, but it seems to me that free market economics has the same weakness: unfettered amplification without counterbalancing isolation removes diversity. And leads to the small number of dominant monopolies in given industry sectors. FANMAG[0] in the tech sector being just the latest example.
That's probably also why we shouldn't be hopeful about the author's proposal as it's likely to end in one of two results:
1. A failure
2. A new monopoly
The idea of a "network of networks" is intuitively appealing at first sight, but it's difficult to see how that serves society well if one company runs them all. Another reason, perhaps, to treat the underlying network as a utility.
Think of the transmission of a disease as the percentage of the population immune to it decreases. Island infections isolated by being unable to reach new susceptible victims fizzle out. But above a certain susceptible percentage, the infection can leap from group to group along the edges where they touch, and it becomes a pandemic.
It's no just that the internet mirrors the real world, although it does. It's that it breaks down isolation barriers in the real world which used to passively defend against the spread of all sorts of unrelated corruption, everything from Nigerian prince scams to bitcoin wallet stealing to nation state disinformation.