The networked information economy and society present a new social, technical, and economic environment within which the university functions. To understand the new challenges and opportunities this environment presents, a usable characterization of the core new characteristics of both the environment and the university as a system and how those characteristics interact to define today's challenges is needed. In this article, the author contends that university networks and technical platforms will have to focus on managing the increasingly permeable boundaries among universities, and between universities and the world outside them. University platform design should be focused on ensuring that faculty and students have the greatest degree possible of authority and capacity to act freely, innovate internally, and participate externally. University systems should be attuned to the need to build platforms for cooperation, as the new practices of cooperation and sharing become more prevalent and more based in a broader shift from an image of hierarchical or market-oriented systems to systems based on individuals collaborating with each other in loose networks.