People networks

I found Grimmelmann's article comparing file sharing networks and terrorism networks to be quiet interesting, particularly in its metaphor of people as a computer network. Just as a hacker disrupts safegards on computers and infiltrates computer networks, terrorists disrupt the people-network of daily life and infiltrates our human communities.

As technology has developed over the last 20 years, computers have moved from being machines that complete tasks that would take humans a long time to do otherwise (complicated math problems, word processing, data management) to machines that allow people to get information from physically distant sources. Computers don't do much "computing" anymore--perhaps a more accurate term for them would be "networkers".