Coda: In Plain Terms

The plain version: institutions get taken over in a few recognizable ways — by founders who will not let go, by money, by whoever controls the technology. Each has a specific lock. — The Cardinal Scale installed all three locks early, while it still trusted everyone, precisely because that is when it is easiest and when no one thinks it necessary. The time to prevent capture is before anyone wants to capture you.

Toward the coherent substrate. Capture is the precise mechanism by which coherent things become extractive ones. This chapter is the immune system of the pivot — the specific locks that keep a coordination infrastructure from being turned, over time, into the most efficient instrument of taking ever built.