Si algo caracteriza a los productos digitales es su naturaleza sistémica. Con sus propias reglas, si la comparamos con otros tipos de sistemas como los que explica Charles C. Mann en su serie de artículos en The New Atlantis, ilustrados estupendamente por Julie Wallace.
The great European cathedrals were built over generations by thousands of people and sustained entire communities. Similarly, the electric grid, the public-water supply, the food-distribution network, and the public-health system took the collective labor of thousands of people over many decades. They are the cathedrals of our secular era. They are high among the great accomplishments of our civilization. But they don’t inspire bestselling novels or blockbuster films. No poets celebrate the sewage treatment plants that prevent them from dying of dysentery. Like almost everyone else, they rarely note the existence of the systems around them, let alone understand how they work.