This is the book I intended to write. Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation and others insisted that I would write a book, instead of only Tweeting and Blogging short “ideas” about Connectivism. Well, the book chapter I wrote about the value of Network Effects would be useful as basis for a book but I found the process cumbersome. As if giving birth for 5 months. And I do not envy the micro-editing that seems to be needed.
So I am lucky that I found a book that explains ‘What Networks Do’ (social & political effects) and why they are important for POWER. At last something the higher echelons of our society should take notice, and read it is in a language they can understand. Networks, technical and social, are now too important to be left to geeks like me to build and run. The crux is that this book will alter the way you look at everything around you: in terms of links/ connections / relations and how they ALTER THE CHARACTER of the (externaly) connected things. And from that new way of looking you start to actively see where you can add and implement new “wires” to weave networks.
The excellent “Chessboard and Web” book by Ann-Marie Slaughter, described in another blog here, can be seen as a geopolitical guideline derived from the Seventh Sense new worldview of Ramo’s book. And in my humble opinion this worldview is the basis for a constructive ‘Second Uprising’ U2 , part of the #resist movement, that is bound to overtake the “populist uprising based on destructive hate and fear” which is simply not working.
The Seventh Sense worldview agrees with a guideline I have often described: Vital for a team or organisation is the quality (cooperation) of its EXTERNAL connections. Which agrees with the Third Evolution Law of Darwin as formulated by prof. Matin Nowak, see https://theconnectivist.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/nowaks-law/
No, what I write in these blogpages an what I do as an activist for connections and cooperation is by no means unique or totally new. Many have proposed parts of it but it is now beginning to show the characteristics of a bottom up ‘groundswell’ which people start to recognise and use as a tool for P2P communities.
jaap van till, TheConnectivist
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The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks
by
Description of the publisher: Not since the twin hammers of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution battered apart the foundations of old Europe has the world faced a shift as elemental, as epochal as what confronts us now. From Facebook to hacking attacks to ISIS, powerful network forces we barely understand are ripping through our connected world, tearing at our most fundamental ideas. What institution do you trust more today than you did ten years ago? Exactly. In this groundbreaking new book, Joshua Cooper Ramo explains a powerful new instinct that we need to understand if we want to see everything from the opportunities for fortune in our age to the most virulent dangers. Animated with experiences studying with Chinese Zen masters and advising generals and CEOs, The Seventh Sense will forever alter the way you look at our the world we now live in.
First edition: May 2016; publisher Little Brown and Company, NY
- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown US; Reprint edition (25 May 2017)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0316395056
- ISBN-13: 978-0316395052
- Product Dimensions: 15.7 x 2.5 x 23.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
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A shorter version of his ideas, more focussed on business audiences, appeared in Fortune: http://fortune.com/2016/07/19/21st-century-network-power/
A similar story is: https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/lyons20121222
The Connectivist 
Maybe also of possible interest:
“Knowledge and praxis of networks as a political project”, Article in Twenty-First Century Society 4(3):277-295, November 2009.
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The artlicle refered to by CA is unfortunately behind a paywall. Its abstract is:
Abstract
Modern-day society is increasingly described as an extensive web of networks, but as such, it is often perceived and experienced as elusive. In light of this paralysing description, this paper aims to highlight the potentially political dimension of network analysis, namely as defined in the social sciences, and of the notion of networks itself. It will be shown that a political project could, in this case, be built on the desire to know this reticular world better, but also to be able to act appropriately towards it. Three steps are proposed to specify how such a political project could be built. The first step aims at deploying knowledge of networks and emphasises the usefulness of a procedure to trace them. The second step shows the possibilities that this knowledge offers, particularly in allowing one to find one’s bearings in a world which is frequently described as veering towards an increasing complexity, and by helping to rebuild the selection criteria for connections in this world, thanks to an additional degree of reflexivity. The third step draws on these points to extend them and bring out potentialities with regards to the intervention capacities in network configurations.
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