In this extract from The Moment of Complexity Emerging Network Culture Mark C Taylor traces the shift from grid to network. He says"

The contrast between grids and networks clarifies the transition from the Cold War system to network culture. The Cold War system was designed to maintain stability by simplifying complex relations and situations in terms of a grid with clear and precise oppositions: East/West, left/right, communism/capitalism, etc. This is a world in which walls seem to provide security. Walls and grids, however, offer no protection from spreading webs; as webs grow, walls collapse and everything begins to change. A new economy displaces the old and a "new world order" appears on the horizon. In this situation, the structural oppositions, which had long informed thinking and guided policy, unravel and the political balance of power disappears. Whereas walls divide and seclude in an effort to impose order and control, webs link and relate, entangling everyone in multiple, mutating, and mutually defining connections in which nobody is really in control. As connections proliferate, change accelerates, bringing everything to the edge of chaos. This is the moment of complexity.