Boundless

3Connection: Relationships | Ecosystems | Sensing

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

—John Muir (1911)

Unlike their silo counterparts, which favor isolation and demarcation, Boundless entities are connected to the outside world, to their customers, and to the markets or ecosystems of which they are a part. They sense what's happening in their environment and with all members and parts of it, and they are able to respond effectively to those signals and changes.

Types of Connections

To follow we elaborate on some of these types of connections.

Natural Connections

Among us humans, connection and interaction with the world around us is established via the sensory organs: the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin. (We're not able to speak about other potential ways of sensing, such as proprioception or energy transmission.) Other animals have more or less advanced forms of the same senses. Some dolphins, whales, and bats navigate and track prey using echolocation. Sharks also sense changes in their surroundings via electroreception, taking advantage of the ability of salt in the water to conduct electric currents emanating from the muscular movement of fish. And many birds, as well as honeybees, ants, and termites, are able to navigate via magnetoreception, connecting to the world in a way we still don't truly understand.

In trees, connections are made via leaves and the bark above ground and via roots and ...