Coordination through all-channel connection at planetary scale, where distributed nodes exchange information, goods, and services across distance without a central controller. Its material substrate is the global connective infrastructure built through the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: containerized supply chains, undersea cables, the internet, and low-earth-orbit satellite constellations.
Usage in the framework
The +N form is the fourth of Ronfeldt’s original TIMN sequence and the one currently mid-transition. Its early promise (near-free global connectivity through the internet and satellite networks like Iridium and Starlink) was largely kept. Its late trajectory is capture by +M logic into surveillance capitalism, and Ronfeldt’s own 2025 reassessment notes that +N is not favoring any of the earlier three realms. The BioConomy corpus follows Ronfeldt’s proposed TIMN-to-TIME move, replacing +N with +E (Emergent) to name the coordination form that survives when the fiat and market substrate is removed. On this reading, +N is the connective substrate; +E is the coordination form that runs on it without collapsing back into +M.
Related terms
Sources and associated figures
- David Ronfeldt
- Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
- Ronfeldt, D. (2025). “Rethinking What ‘Tribes’ and ‘Networks’ Are Good For”
Provenance
Written 5 September 2026 to complete the TIMN glossary set alongside T, +I, +M, and +E. The material-substrate reading (supply chains, internet, satellite) and the +N-to-+E transition framing follow from the Promise Theory Across TIMN research brief.