We sat in the shade under the apple trees through that whole summer sipping wine and mulling it over.
It came down to this, we decided, that it would be possible to replace 'management' by expert systems. 'Management', according to Taru's definition, was any system of people intervening in the direct contact of people with decisions, and with other people - which could include Presidents, Ministers, CEO's, Chiefs of all kinds basically. 'We are the Indians', she said. And she meant it. Ugh! White Man talk with bifurcated tongue.
Now it was clear that there was the processing power to do it. The network was there. The conspiracy club had all the brains needed to write the software. But what was the software really going to do? It was Harry's turn to be a leader - though in the electronic company of all these anarchists, I avoided thinking of myself in those terms. "What we need to do", I announced in the Electric Minds chat, "was what Bill Gates did. Make a decision - like 'The Internet is where it's at' - and then focus all our resources on making 'at' happen". What I really wanted to say was 'Let's get somebody smarter to make all the decisions'. But being polite...