map no matter what. He has a
more permanent model, but his liability is his propensity to mistake
his map for the actual territory.

The difference between the cartographer and the surfer's experience of
the ocean is akin to pre and post-renaissance relationships to story.
The first relies on the most linear and static interpretations of the
story in order to create a static and authoritative template through
which to glean its meaning. The latter relies on the living,
moment-to-moment perceptions of its many active interpreters to
develop a way of relating to its many changing patterns. Ultimately,
in a cognitive process not unlike that employed by a chaos
mathematician, the surfer learns to recognise the order underlying
what at first appears to be random turbulence. Events, images, and
arrangements that might otherwise have appeared to be unrelated are
now, thanks to a world view that acknowledges discontinuity, revealed
to be connected. To those unfamiliar with this style of pattern
recognition, the connections they draw may appear to be as unrelated
as a fortune-teller's tea leaves or Tarot cards are from the future
events she predicts. Nonetheless, the surfer understands each moment
and event in his world as a possible reflection on any other aspect or
moment in the entire system.

What gets reborn

The renaissance experience of moving beyond the frame allows
everything old to look new again. We are liberated from the maps we
have been using to navigate our world and free to create new ones
based on our own observations. This invariably leads to a whole new
era of competition. Renaissance may be a rebirth of old ideas in a new
context, but which ideas get to be reborn?

The first to recognise the new renaissance will compete to have their
ideologies be the ones that are rebirthed in this new context. This is
why, with the emergence of the internet, we saw the attempted rebirth
(and occasional stillbirth) of everything from paganism to
libertarianism, and communism to psychedelia. Predictably, the
financial markets and consumer capitalism, the dominant narratives of
our era, were the first to successfully commandeer the renaissance.
But they squandered their story on a pyramid scheme (indeed, the
accelerating force of computers and networks tends to force any story
to its logical conclusion) and now the interactive renaissance is once
again up for grabs.

Perhaps the most valuable idea to plant now, into