The Network is a Mycelial Web

In the quiet of the kitchen, a jar of vegetables begins to fizz. In the dark soil of a forest floor, a vast web of mycelium connects tree to tree. These are not just biological processes; they are living networks, operating on principles that make our most advanced human systems look primitive and fragile.

As I’ve written before, there are profound microbial lessons for a living planet . The intelligence at work is decentralised, cooperative, and stunningly resilient. There is no CEO of the sourdough starter, no central server for the forest floor. The system works because it is a network of autonomous peers, each sensing and responding to its local environment, contributing to the health of the whole.

For years, we have built our human systems on a completely different model: hierarchical, centralised, and brittle. From monarchies to multinational corporations, the logic has been one of command and control. But what if the future of technology—and society—looks less like a pyramid and more like a mycelial web?

The Corporate Monoculture

In my series on killing the corporation , I argued that the modern corporation is a legal fiction whose primary directive—profit maximisation—is fundamentally at odds with the health of our communities and ecosystems. It is a monoculture of thought, bulldozing diversity in the pursuit of a single, sterile goal.

This architectural rigidity is its greatest weakness. Like a farm planted with a single crop, a centralised system is incredibly vulnerable. If the central point of control fails, the entire network collapses. If a single disease hits the monoculture, the whole harvest is lost. This is the world of server outages, single points of failure, and top-down censorship.

Technological Mycelium: The Zen of Reticulum

Now, consider a different architecture, one that mirrors the wisdom of the microbial world. A project like Reticulum is a perfect example of technological biomimicry. It is a communication system designed to be a distributed, self-healing web with no central point of failure.

• It is permissionless. Just as any spore can join the mycelial network, anyone can set up a Reticulum node and begin communicating. There is no one to ask for permission.
• It is resilient. If a path is blocked, the network automatically finds another. Like mycelium growing around a rock, it adapts to the terrain. Communication flows where it can.
• It is based on local knowledge. Each node only needs to know about its immediate peers. It does not need a map of the entire network. This makes it incredibly efficient and scalable, just as a microbe responds to its immediate chemical environment without needing to understand the whole jar.
• Trust is cryptographic, not institutional. You don’t trust the network; you trust the cryptography. This removes the need for a central authority to validate identities or messages.

This is not just a different way to build a network. It is a fundamentally different worldview. It is a shift from designing systems of control to cultivating ecosystems of connection. It is the “intelligence in the jar,” scaled to a planetary level.

From Biology to Society

What does it mean to think like a mycelial web? It means valuing diversity over uniformity. It means building systems that empower the edges rather than concentrating power at the centre. It means understanding that true resilience comes from a dense web of interconnected, autonomous peers.

We see this pattern in successful natural systems everywhere. A diverse meadow is more resilient to drought than a manicured lawn. A gut with a rich microbiome is healthier than one that has been sterilised.

Our challenge is to apply this lesson to our own creations. Can we build economies that function like a forest, where the waste of one process is the food for another? Can we build governance systems that are as adaptive and responsive as a microbial colony?

The answers will not come from the top down. They will emerge from the bottom up, from the small, local experiments, from the connections we weave ourselves. The revolution will not be televised; it will be fermented. It will be networked. It will be alive.