New technologies will make self-organizing enterprises possible

Glen Reynolds of Instapundit has a really interesting article about the 21st century reemergence of public spaces Bringing the Public Back to Public Spaces. The article discusses public-space WiFi Clouds The moneyquote for me is:

"But my guess is that the end result will look more like the 18th century coffeehouses, in which so many of that day conducted their business, than like the office towers where the 20th century's men in the gray flannel suits used to go. This is part of what seems to me to be a larger phenomenon: 19th and 20th century technology seemed to favor aggregation, uniformity, and large size. 21st century technology seems to favor diversity, variety, and small size -- along with a much higher degree of interconnection. From politics to work, I think there are quite a few revolutions along these lines yet to come, and I think they'll go well beyond comfy chairs."

I've always been intrigued by my struggles with a unified theory of human organization. On one hand, the laissez-faire approach to economics has been successful while command-and-control economies have failed. On the other hand, successful corporations in the 20th century have been organized on the military, or command-and-control framework, even though they deal with the freedom and anarchy of the free market. Wouldn't the commercial enterprise of the 21st century be more efficient if it could harness the intelligence and energies of all of its employees more along the lines of the lassize-faire model?

I now think that the emergence of the Internet, WiFi -- and yes -- Blogs and Wikis will provide the tools to enable self-organization of large commercial enterprises. Even in the military, the old command-and-control model is fading, as more information and decision making power is moving down to the battlefield and away from staff headquarters. 21st century technology is pushing both information and decision making power down lower in all manner of organizations. The CEO and his staff will have much different jobs in the future.