On 17 March 2000, in response to an anonymous comment about Wiki's vulnerability:

"... Still this seems like such a fragile system. Any single person could send the entire thing crashing to the ground...."

Bo Leuf wrote:

"Yes, it's true that anyone can do destructive editing, but that's a little like scribbling in the sand: no challenge and the results are transient. And 'community' expresses the concept fairly well. The place runs by consensus and by the individual actions of members and visitors. It's an ongoing experiment, a global guestbook. And there can be great beauty in fragile things. – Bo Leuf"

I found this exchange while looking for something mundane. In the context of the 11 September 2001 terrorism, its relevance staggered me. Civilization is a communal product, a naturally-evolved web, robust and stable (see ThreadsOfHistory, TheVeto, etc.).

Skyscrapers, however, are fragile. So are human lives. And there can be great beauty in fragile things.

Thank you, Bo, for those thoughts.

TopicSociety - 2001-09-15

I would love to relegate this act of terrorism to the status of scribbling in the sand, for it to have only vague and transient results.

– dr Suz

(correlates: WikiCss, RulesVersusPrinciples, IdeaChampions, ...)