From Whole Earth: Vital Cities: an interview with Jane Jacobs: It [the internet] interests me as one more remarkable self-organized system, but there are lots of other self-organized systems. When the civil mail system began, it was self-organized and was only later taken up by institutions and systematized. It got quite organized by people who would go to taverns where they knew that travelers were and earn a little money by picking up letters to deliver, especially around waterfronts or coaching stations.