The Mycelium Network Case Study: Three People, One Crisis, Three Internets

How infrastructure decides what can be known.

Opening: The Knife-Edge Word Choice

This entire discussion began with a subtle piece of grammar:

“The rise of digital systems _____ our modern world.”

When faced with choosing between predominating and dominating, predominating feels intuitively right. After all, digital systems—screens, apps, cloud services—are everywhere. They are the most numerous, the most visible, the most common factor in our daily lives. They are the magnificent Oaks towering over the forest.

But this word fails the moment you shift your focus from how much digital systems exist to what they do to the fundamental space of possible action and knowledge.

The power of the modern network is not that of the overwhelming Oak; it is the silent, structural power of the Mycelium—the fungal undergrowth that permeates the soil, defining what can grow, how fast nutrients flow, and which roots are permitted to connect.

To understand why the digital world is defined by domination, not just predominance, we need to move past abstractions. We need to watch three people standing in the same forest at the exact same moment in time, each experiencing an entirely different reality.

The Event: One Question, No Abstractions

Let us imagine a moment of shared, global urgency.

Reports emerge of serious, nuclear-backed saber rattling between Türkiye and Israel. Conflicting claims circulate within hours. Airstrikes are rumored. Official statements contradict eyewitness accounts. Chaos mounts quickly.

All three people we observe are trying to answer the same essential question:

“What is actually happening?”

They are equally motivated, skeptical, and urgent. Their motivation is the same. The only variable is the network they stand on, and the silent Mycelium beneath their feet.

Case One: The Zero-Rated Internet (Free Basics User Niger)

Our first observer is in a major city in Niger. She is smart and has access to a modern smartphone. But her internet access is delivered via a subsidized, “zero-rated” scheme. This means accessing certain major platforms (like Meta’s core services) is free, while accessing the general web requires paying high, per-megabyte rates.

The Mycelium’s Constraint: Blockage and Selection.

When she searches for news, the zero-rated browser loads instantly. She sees local political discussions and international headlines, but only those hosted on the approved, subsidized platforms.

• She finds a report on a conflict from an independent news site. When she clicks the link, the page stalls or redirects to a payment prompt.
• She tries to cross-check an official statement with a human rights group’s website. The page loads, but the critical embedded images, maps, and verification Captchas fail to appear, as they rely on non-zero-rated external servers.
• She cannot access a reliable, foreign fact-checking site because it requires a heavy JavaScript load or external CDN resources that the Mycelium refuses to water.

For her, “the internet” is the walled garden provided by the dominant platform. Plurality is structurally impossible. Her ability to verify a rumor is capped not by her motivation or her device, but by a financial decision made by a massive tech company thousands of miles away. The Mycelium has amputated the roots she needs.

Case Two: The Constrained but Open Internet (Rural India)

Our second observer lives in a medium-sized town in rural India. He has a 4G connection, but data is costly, and the service is prone to throttling. He uses the “real” internet, but every byte costs money.

The Mycelium’s Constraint: Channeling and Compression.

When he asks, “What is actually happening?” the constraint shifts from blockage to friction.

• He skips heavy newspaper websites that chew through his data budget in seconds.
• He relies heavily on efficient platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, and YouTube. These platforms load fast and cheap, but they act as powerful de facto editors. The narrative he encounters is often stripped of nuance, compressed into easily shareable images, or propagated via short, emotionally impactful videos.
• He searches on Google. The search rankings, driven by the platform’s own algorithmic gravity, elevate massive international news organizations and government sites, while smaller, slower, local reporters who might have a deeper understanding are relegated to the bottom of page two.

In this environment, domination channels the flow. Plurality exists, but it is too expensive to consume broadly. The cost of verification (checking a 10MB article against two other 10MB articles) is too high. He is forced to accept the most efficient, compressed, and often already-amplified narrative the Mycelium sends his way.

Case Three: The Abundant Internet (Beirut)

Our third observer lives in Beirut. She has high-speed fiber access and an ample data plan. She represents the ideal user of the post-IPv6 world: no scarcity, no NAT chaperone, and high bandwidth.

The Mycelium’s Constraint: Algorithmic Visibility and Economic Funneling.

She searches and finds an overload of information.

• Multiple international outlets load instantly, competing for her attention.
• She sees opposing viewpoints on Twitter and TikTok amplified by bots and competing governments.
• The immediate problem is not access, but sense-making.

Here, the Mycelium’s domination is quiet and insidious:

• Platform Moderation: Her search for eyewitness accounts is filtered by platforms whose policies are opaque, deleting or downranking content deemed “sensitive” or “misinformation”—a policy set far away from Beirut.
• CDN Prioritization: The content that loads fastest and is visually the most appealing comes from sites that pay for top-tier Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)—often the same massive corporate entities whose interests may align with certain political narratives.
• Algorithmic Funneling: Her feed is immediately optimized for engagement, not truth. The Mycelium knows what will hold her attention and serves her the emotionally charged version of the conflict, making it harder to find the slow, dry, verified source.

The Abundant Internet offers choice, but the mechanics of the infrastructure—algos, prioritization, and policy—ensure that choice is guided along economically convenient paths. Domination here is hardest to see precisely because it feels like freedom.

Comparison: Three Answers, One World

We started with one question and ended with three fundamentally different informational realities.

These observers did not just develop different opinions. They inhabited different epistemic terrains—landscapes where the cost of verification, the availability of sources, and the narrative flow were structurally predetermined by the surrounding digital infrastructure.

The person in Niger faced exit costs: getting out of the walled garden was too expensive. The person in rural India faced verification costs: cross-checking the narrative was too expensive in time and data. The person in Beirut faced sense-making costs: escaping the algorithmic gravity was cognitively exhausting.

Return to the Word Choice

This is why “predominating” cannot capture what just happened.

Digital systems don’t just exist largely; they actively shape the physical and economic conditions under which knowledge is created, distributed, and consumed. They are not the Oaks you can walk away from. They are the Mycelium.

They decide where information can flow cheaply, where it flows at all, and where a user’s resources are best spent—always encouraging consumption via the largest, most profitable, and most centrally controlled channels.

That’s domination.

Ontology Tie-In: Where Is the Store Now?

The philosopher’s question of the e-store’s location—is it with its members, its servers, or its customers?—misses the true center of gravity in the age of the Mycelium.

The e-store, the news source, the political debate, the very space of possible action, is not located with the building or the person.

It is located where the constraints live.

And those constraints are infrastructural: the policies of zero-rated access, the price per megabyte of transit, the algorithmic visibility controls, and the ownership of the physical fiber cables that comprise the silent, powerful Mycelium Network.

Closing: The Quiet Danger

When digital domination is fungal rather than architectural, you don’t overthrow it by tearing down a wall or walking away from a giant tree. You live inside it, breathe through it, and learn what it will let you know.

That is the profound, structural reality of the world digital systems don’t just populate—they dominate.