People exult in garden plantings and decry weeds, though both may bear the same shade of flower. Why? The main difference is that a weed has the more robust reproductive strategy - it vexes gardeners by flourishing on its own.
Many of us are quick to laud nature as a model for technology. The truth is we prefer our devices to be unnaturally consistent.
Yet the weed may be the prime mover of our digital works. The links that shoot across the Web may be the result of someone's intention, but no one has planned or even knows the extent of the interconnections.
There is no real librarian on the Web, no master gardener: links seem to spring up on their own. They thrive without tending, harking back to a world before agriculture.
The electronic world, said Marshall McLuhan, has margins everywhere and centers nowhere. Look for the colors that pop up unexpectedly on the peripheries. They're the future.
