Sublime

9. Companies, cities, currencies, communities, and countries are all becoming networks: We should start thinking of collections of people—whether communities, cities, companies, or countries—as cohesive agents unto themselves, less constrained by territoriality and with different layers aligned with one another in shifting combinations.

It seems, then, that the elusive ‘big men’ of the fifth century might be found in a number of characteristic places: at Roman forts with evidence for continued life; in some, perhaps many of the smaller towns with coherent hinterlands; on some villa estates; in the hillfort country of the west and north and along Continent-facing navigable rivers.

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