By Professor Paul P. Wang, Professor S. K. Chang (auth.), Paul P. Wang, S. K. Chang (eds.)

As the platforms which shape the cloth of contemporary society turn into extra advanced and extra interdependent, the necessity for the knowledge of the habit of such platforms turns into an increasing number of crucial. What are the motives and attainable remedies for the global inflation that is posing a significant risk to the industrial balance and social order of either built and underdeveloped international locations? What are the trade-offs among the pressing desire for added assets of strength and the dangers posed by way of the proliferation of nuclear reactors? How can one devise mass transportation structures that are quickly, comforta­ ble, handy, and but no longer prohibitively dear? those matters are yet the various extra seen difficulties posed by way of what may be referred to as the concern of undercoordination--a quandary rooted within the widen­ ing hole among the measure of interdependence within the platforms of contemporary society and the measure of coordination which libertarian societies are prepared to tolerate. The disquieting implication of this predicament is that to accomplish balance via coordination may perhaps necessitate the imposition of pervasive controls that may be not easy to just accept by means of societies steeped within the democratic culture. seen during this standpoint, the necessity for constructing a greater figuring out of the habit of large-scale societal platforms provides an issue of even more than only educational importance.