observed in his “On Certainty” at the end of his life.2? So with networks. We will get to know their nature by learning to use them. By watching what they do, observing them in their surprising movements. We know at least already that puzzles like the future of US-China relations or income inequality or artificial intelligence are simply not addressable with traditional thinking because they occur on a network surface now. Old-style ideas about each of these will likely lead us down dangerous paths. Our leaders today are, as a result, imperiling us in ways they can’t even understand. Honestly, these figures are not mentally prepared to fight any sort of battle on this landscape. They probably never will be. I’m not saying effective leadership now demands you know what “the instantiation of a class” in object oriented programming means - or that you master the technical roots of some other crucial, philosophical idea of connective design. But a feeling for the laws of networks, for the normalness of connection and the pressures that it produces is essential at least. That the terrorists of ISIS or the founders of gaming app companies are better at growth hacking - the subtle art of using data, connection and instinct to breed massive virtual communities - than our own institutions or our leaders should unnerve us for a couple of reasons. First, because it demonstrates a mastery of new power tools that move with astonishing speed, assembling nation-sized movements and forces in incomprehensively brief periods of time. But we should also worry - and this is as crucial - because that fast pace is colliding with a set of slower-moving instincts, institutions and people who still control substantial levers of power. At the same moment in time that many of us are alive with the joy of being around something that is beginning, most of our leaders are locked sadly or with terror into the ending of something else. Same exact moment. Different instincts. It reminds me of Virgi