Networking and its critics, ancient and modern

The following is an excerpt from an article that ran in the Boston Globe on June 14, adapted from Duncan Watts in the Harvard Business Review. He's making the point that the more complex a system becomes, the less predictable - and sustainable - it is, and that this is an inherent feature of its very complexity:

It may be true, in fact, that complex networks such as financial systems face an inescapable trade-off - between size and efficiency on one hand, and global stability on the other. Once they have been assembled, in other words, globally interconnected and integrated financial networks just may be too complex to prevent crises like the current one from reoccurring.

It is interesting to recall and compare Aristotle's criterion of the polis eusunoptos in both the Politics and Nicomachean Ethics - the ideal city should be able to be 'taken in at one glance' - at least, not too big to be wieldy. Aristotle not only considered an obvious target - the monstrous Babylon, in which, anecdotally, one part of the city did not know it had been conquered in war until some days had passed - but even criticized Socrates for proposing a city with 5000 male citizens.