Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology

by Azeem Azhar

Of course, it would be foolhardy to extrapolate too much from these early clashes between urban and national. But we can begin to make out the contours of an Exponential Age society in which there are constant conflicts between cities and nations. Exponential technologies allow cities more autonomy and self-sufficiency in electricity, trade and food. The exponential economy favours the complex, high-skill activities that are best supported by large, diverse urban populations. If the industrial age of nineteenth and twentieth centuries cemented the importance of the nation state, the Exponential Age is shifting much of that significance to great cities. The result is a tension over where decisions about many aspects of the daily lives of more than half of humanity should occur: at the level of the nation state, or closer to home, in the city.