Month: February 2013

Life in a Networked Age

erichLeave a comment

John Robb, who brought us the term “open source warfare,” wallops the concerns of governance of our increasingly global network:

A global network is too large and complex for a bureaucracy to manage.  It would be too slow, expensive, and inefficient to be of value.  Further, even if one could be built, it would be impossible to apply market dyanmics [sic] (via democratic elections) to selecting the leaders of that bureaucracy.  The diversity in the views of the 7 billion of us on this planet are too vast.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2013/02/life-in-a-networked-age-.html

Transnational Corporation Networks Affect the Market and Stability

erichLeave a comment

The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic “super-entity” that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0025995