It might be more useful to use a biological rather than a mechanical model. I'm reading book called "Pulse: The Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things" by Robert Frenay. (Pre-pub, it'll be out in early April). The overarching theme is that our world is determined by mechanical, machine-age metaphors, which are not very useful in describing our present world (the "cyberspace" example you use is a good one). The author argues that the new analogies will be based on our (new and much-improved) understanding of biology and ecological systems. In fact, he says that the machine-age metaphors were biology-inspired as well, but it's just a very old and superseded view of biology. Recommended...