As all things are conceivably rhetoric, so too could all “things” be Network (intentional initial cap singular). I’m not making much sense here, but let me drop in this paragraph from the Wired article about the grassroots growth of Firefox and the nature of open-source communities (networks?).

Whatever success Firefox sees, it will come from social engineering as much as software engineering. Firefox has been the product of a massive get-out-the vote effort. While Goodger [the current principle programmer on the project] was refining Firefox code, Ross [the former principle who initially worked on the Mozilla Group project] started Spread Firefox, a community site that hosts Firefox blogs and gives points to a volunteer army of operatives for converting the masses. SpreadFirefox.com functions as a clearinghouse for marketing and recrutiting strategies, a coordination center for coders, banner designers, and evangelists. The site was built on Civic Space, software developed by … Chris Messina for the Howard Dean online campaign. “Software development is a political process,” says Messina.

There are a lot of threads in this blip relevant to all that Watts discusses – particularly the social aspects of networks and their organic yet controlled nature. For me, this also raises some interesting questions about the role networks play in design. My inclination is that design (document, software, systems, etc.) is a more humanistic endeavor than I’ve come to understand it.