Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
“But which is the stone that supports the bridge?” Kublai Khan asks.
“The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,” Marco answers, “but by the line of the arch that they form.”
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: “Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is the arch that matters to me.”
Polo answers: “Without stones there is no arch.”
– Italo Calvino, Invisible cities (via thisway)
viewed through a contemporary lens, this can be a theory of networks and nodes