Steve's focus on the storage and retrieval aspects of a network are particularly interesting to me and I would like to toss out a few comments. In neural networks, it is the network itself, and its connections that store the information and not the individual nodes. Neural networks are built to adapt to new information, or for that matter to the change of configuration of nodes. If we work from a model of human knowledge and learning as being based on neural networks, then any organization is a network of neural networks, an internet, and we all know that an internet is really just another network. So, we can see an organization having knowledge that the individuals don't have. To make this a little more concrete, take a look at how RAID 5 disk systems work. The information is spread across several different drives with some redundancy built in. No single drive contains a complete set of information. It is more efficient (depending on the type of application) than simple mirroring. It is also more secure, in that if one drive is stolen, it is extremely difficult to ascertain the data stored. This would carry back nicely to Mark's original parallel between a terrorist cell and a distributed network. A well set up organization should have information redundantly distributed, but in such a way that no single node can be used to ascertain the information of the organization. I must admit, however, I don't have any experience with terrorist cells, so I don't know how close they come to such an approach. As to the despoiling of natural resources, it is my recollection that this was explored quite nicely in a science fiction story a few decades ago, where they explored the social implications of teleportation. I believe the story was named something like 'Flash Crowd'. Does anyone remember the story? Aldon __________________________________________________ Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help? Donate cash, emergency relief information http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/