Purposive Drift

Web Thinking

A piece in the New Yorker got me thinking about Jane Jacobs again. (I've written about her here before in relation to the concept of Purposive Drift) So exploring the web I found this link, which took me to this interview from about two years ago, where she puts forward this cheerful thought:

"...we are living, I am convinced, in one of the most intellectually exciting times the human race has ever gone through. We are emerging from this linear cause-and-effect way of seeing the world into a way that has really been led by the ecologists, into a Web world, beginning to understand relationships in quite a different way. And it is affecting everything. And no end of people have grasped this and are seeing the world differently and analyzing things differently and seeing possibilities differently--basically in a very hopeful way. And I think this is awfully exciting. People who are younger than I am, you are lucky. You can play a part in what I think can be an extremely hopeful stage."