Paul Seabright on Cities
From In the Company of Strangers (2004), pg. 121:
[E]ven those with apparently great power – derived from their ability to inflict unchallenged violence – find the sheer complexity of the cities impossible to organize to their satisfaction. The inhabitants of cities interact with each other in ways that no one has foreseen, not even themselves. Conservative authorities – aristocracies, churches, guilds – have always been wary of cities, seeing them as decadent places not only because decadent people choose to live there but also because people’s behavior changes when they arrive in the city. In the city, individuals experiment and invent; they refashion everything from their political ideologies, their relationships with their parents, their sexuality, and the music that moves them, to the industrial processes with which they work. Others have admired cities for just that reason, and for writers such as Balzac the corruption and cynicism of the city — the ease with which people can change their skin — are the very features that give it energy and life.
What does this tell us about life in the internet?
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