The genius — sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental — of the enterprises now on such a steep ascent is that they have found their way through the looking-glass and emerged as something else. Their models are no longer models. The search engine is no longer a model of human knowledge, it is human knowledge. What began as a mapping of human meaning now defines human meaning, and has begun to control, rather than simply catalog or index, human thought. No one is at the controls. If enough drivers subscribe to a real-time map, traffic is controlled, with no central model except the traffic itself. The successful social network is no longer a model of the social graph, it is the social graph. This is why it is a winner-take-all game. Governments, with an allegiance to antiquated models and control systems, are being left behind.
These days when I want to find obscure knowledge, I purchase books written on the topic by scholars; they concentrate the information very well with good sourcing.
To define China's system of censorship as successful seems premature. We have had similar systems in the past, and while they maintained some form of stability for the status quo they ultimately hindered those society's progress.
"It is true that if you have a tyranny of ideas, so that you know exactly what has to be true, you act very decisively, and it looks good – for a while. But soon the ship is heading in the wrong direction, and no one can modify the direction any more." -Richard Feynman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
How what we create ends up shaping us. For example, what we think of "reality" today, is the fiction we created in sitcoms and television shows that shaped our view of the world when we grew up. We dress like "cool" people, we dance like "cool" people, we imitate one another.. so in the end we become the fiction.
But to be honest I don't know which way to read the article. Besides the main "emergent / unplanned" idea I'm not sure what his point is. edit: I guess he meant to say that the "digital revolution" promised more control over our lives, and instead it is becoming something completely unplanned.
I had a feeling related to this when a couple of months ago, after I had given a friend a ride, she told me that she was really amazed of how I was driving around without using an always-on GPS map. I realized that for people in my age (their 20s and 30s) driving in a car now involves being dependent on your GPS maps.
It can be applied to many things.