One of my fondest memories from high school is learning about different types of infinities. The Cantor Diagonal proof is a as beautiful piece of argument as exists anywhere. Also present in that course was discussion of fractional dimensions, especially as to how they pertained to fractals.

Those who are familiar with the Gamma Function, or the Kardashev Scale will know of the technique of interpolating between the integer points of a numerical scale. (The Kardashev scale is cool enough to deserve its own post, and beyond the scope today.)

I was originally planning to talk about the First World/Second World/Third World model most often talked about in the media, but Mao’s Three Worlds Theory feels like it offers a slightly more linear progression between the three worlds.

The question is: What numbering would you give the world of the Internet? Of 4chan? Is this even a sensical question?

There are a number of different ways* you can try and quantify this. Using the West’s ‘Three-world Model’:

– “Alignment with ‘The West'”: This is where the ‘1st world’ is ‘The West’, the ‘2nd world’ is aligned opposite to ‘The West’, the ‘3rd world’ is not aligned with respect to the ‘West’. A ‘4th world’ or ‘0th world’ might be against the entire concept of ‘Alignment’ (Nations with multiple internal factions or with governments not exclusively beholden to one of the blocs might be part of the ‘1.3 world’. This becomes difficult with nations which are partially non-aligned, and partially aligned with the ‘1st world’, as the math doesn’t work out. You’d want a numerical Venn diagram** for this.)

– “Economic Development”: (This is problematic, as you have one of the groups deciding on its own the hierarchy of the groups, and for many other reasons.) In this case, though, you might be able to have worlds which have sprung up since the Three Worlds Theory was conceived be put on the chart. In this case, the Internet might indeed be the 0.6th world…

Using Mao’s ‘Three Worlds Theory’:

– You could classify Internet opinion and culture as a new lesser power, or perhaps even superpower. I think the Internet is not quite organized, and probably still too easily manipulated, to be a superpower. More like a regional power, with its region being spread around most of the world. Thinking about it like this, it might qualify as a 2.0 or 2.1 power.
– If you think about the division as ‘Imperial Superpowers’, ‘Lesser Powers’, and ‘Exploited nations’, the Internet is somewhat ‘Imperial’, in that its culture permeates and is conquering and eating entire industries. To qualify as a ‘Lesser Power’, it must be at least nominally be independent. Under this definition, the Internet might qualify as 1.6 power, higher or lower depending on how much ‘The Internet’ includes Internet companies

*I tried my best to 4-box this (in best business book fashion), but couldn’t come up with anything reasonable. The ‘unaligned’ nature of the ‘3rd world’ fills up two of the four boxes with most models. The closest I could get was to have Switzerland and maybe a few others in the 4th box, with the axes being GDP and alignment.

**Stay tuned for a later post…This is a fun concept!