nuclear and thermonuclear devices in the United States arsenal. As a personal historical anecdote, we recall few if any instances of practicing fallout drills during the early days of the cold war. Such drills were the fodder of a number of Civil Defense films, illustrating how students in school might take defensive positions under their desks as a shield against the flash of an exploding nuclear bomb. The general assumption in Sayre was that, should the Cold War transform into a hot war, our school would fall within the margin of targeting error of so many incoming intercontinental missiles that hiding under a school desk or ducking into a fallout shelter was going to offer little solace to the near instantaneous vaporization resulting from literally tens or hundreds of megatons of explosive capacity unleashed on or near us. We mention these points merely to note, as we have said quite often, that understanding is based on context. Moreover, we suggest that one can garner very interesting context in unexpected places. Our collective context tended to reach somewhat beyond the local cotton patch.

Thus, with this bit of presentation of context, we arrive at our consideration of the prospects of the evolutionary progression of computer networks into the future. As we have also often noted, computers comprise the most complex set of tools yet constructed by any species. More important, among the tools of humans, computers are the most capable of supporting processes across the full range of individual appetites. They facilitate satisfying the needs of the mind as well as of the body. Existing variants of computers provide significant support for and enhancements to the human sensori-motor system. They enable people to interact across time and space with other people and with the computers and ancillary tools of other people. However, a methodical examination of existent systems suggests that something is amiss in this magnificent repertoire. In particular, we note significant deficiencies in the support across the full range of human cognitive facilities; at least, compared to the capabilities enabled through evolution-derived direct interaction processes. Very specifically, computers in general are lacking in the mechanisms through which trusted groups are formed and maintained. These mechanisms have proven to be extremely beneficial to the species across the ages. Rather, in their current incarnations, computer networks serve to diminish the threat detection and aversion facilities that groups have historically provided. In particular, when we pursue interactions across the Internet wide-area network, the result is often to establish in us an altered state of consciousness, due to distortions induced in the human sensori-motor system and in the cognitive facilities through which the connection between sensory input and motor output is effected. As currently instantiated, computers and computer networks tend to allow the predators of and on the human species to bypass our defenses where we are at our most vulnerable, in our privacy and our physical isolation. We suggest that in order to address these deficiencies and to more fully exploit the beneficial capabilities that computers provide, there may yet occur an evolutionary extension of the computer species; or, perhaps more correctly, there may yet emerge a new species of computer. This new species would serve to facilitate the traits of human social ecosystems; to amplify without distortion the capabilities of our individual sensori-motor systems and to more fully project the facilities necessary to fulfill our individual and collective needs. To accomplish these goals, we might ask, “What is missing in current networks?” In a word, trust!

In Chapter 5, we observed that social ecosystems are grounded first in the establishment, conveyance and application of trust. Successively larger and more successful groups were founded on phylogenetically derived facilities enabled by human evolution. Only within a viable trust infrastructure does it become feasible to create an effective policy infrastructure. Furthermore, the multiple policy infrastructures that we find ourselves having to navigate, some of them exceedingly complex, could certainly be better addressed with cognitive tools especially designed for the purpose. This, it would seem, best describes the evolutionary nexus that we anticipate; a species of computer that is grounded first in the establishment of trust and then in the

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