[...] For me, it all began while I was researching a book on early cyberculture.
 Around  1990, the entirety of California's emerging digital society seemed to be
 summed up by a single image: the fractal. I'd see the paisley-like geometry  on
 Grateful Dead tickets, in new reports out of UC Santa Cruz about systems theory,
 on the t-shirts of kids also wearing cryptic smiles, in books on chaos math and
 on the computer screens of virtual reality programmers at Sun. These depictions
 of non-linear math equations - equations that cycle almost infinitely rather than
 finding "solutions" as we commonly think of them - embodied a new way of
 looking at the world.

 As we were all to learn, the fractal is a self-similar universe. Zoom in on one
 level, and you find a shape strikingly similar but not exactly the same as  one
 on a higher level, and so on. The fractal is a conceptual leap, inhabiting  the
 space between  formerly discreet  dimensions. In  the process,  it allows us to
 measure the very  rough surfaces of  reality - rocks,  forests, clouds and  the
 weather - more accurately and satisfactorily than the idealistic but altogether
 limited linear  approximations we'd  been using  since the  ancient Greeks. The
 fractal heralded a new way of looking  at the world - of experiencing it  - and
 of  understanding that  every tiny  detail reflected,  in some  small way,  the
 entirety of the system. [...]

 Douglas Rushkoff