So, the chief effect of these technologies is to put you in command again. The trouble with top-down centralized technologies, which the telephone and television represent, is that they're dumb equipment attached to complex switching systems and broadcasting technologies. On the other hand, the chief virtue of distributed intelligence is that the network can be dumb and the control of it can be distributed to smart users. That means that technologies are much more servants than rulers of your life. When I look at networks I see counter-intuitive behavior.
Distributed networks have a remarkable ability to be slightly out of anyone's control.
The Internet, for instance, is an exciting kind of metaphor for spontaneous order. It shows that in order to have a very rich fabric of services you don't need a regimented system of control. When there's a lot of intelligence at the fringes everywhere, the actual network itself can be fairly simple. The future is dumb networks. We put smartness in everything else.