Check out this recent video from the FuturICT group in which Paul Lukowicz presents his take on the project from the perspective of a computer scientist.
A lot of the issues we have been discussing come up very explicitly in this bit. Particularly interesting, I think, is how emergent structure on the one hand and purposefully built infrastructure on the other are being renegotiated conceptually, and how both are finally raised to the offer of a platform: “there will be an infrastructure” which all kinds of people may contribute to, may use to run their own projects on, and built their own apps.

A couple of more videos are linked at the site, for example a ten-minute promo of the project.