Around ... God, 20 years ago now? I was at FSOSS at Seneca arguing that the internet had changed the atomic values of society in a way we hadn't come to grips with. Between the Code Of Hammurabi and The Peace Of Westphalia, the old "units" of society were either the individual or the state. I said, the network enables two new ideas now, the corporation and the cell - transational, heirarchic capital, and global, loosely connected, ideologically aligned groups.

Far as I know I'm the only person who remembers that speech even happened, and it's been very strange to hold this perspective over time, watching this evolving power dynamic of the world play out globally, feeling like I'm watching a game where the announcers and referees can't even see half the pieces because they don't know their names.

@mhoye I once heard the phrase "bishop's view" used to express the idea that the bishops in a game of chess can only see half the board - white-square bishops can infer the existence of black squares from the behavior of other pieces and vice versa, but half of their world is in their blind spot.