Perceived connections, patterns, networks

Perceived connections, patterns, networks. Any consideration of networks, especially as they relate to consciousness, thought systems, history, etc. would be incomplete without some consideration of apophenia, "the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena." (Robert Todd Carroll, The Skeptic's Dictionary, 1994-2005.)

In statistics, apophenia is called a Type I error, seeing patterns where none, in fact, exist. It is highly probable that the apparent significance of many unusual experiences and phenomena are due to apophenia, e.g., EVP, numerology, the Bible code, anomalous cognition, ganzfeld "hits", most forms of divination, the prophecies of Nostradamus, remote viewing, and a host of other paranormal and supernatural experiences and phenomena. (Carroll)

The human brain is a powerful pattern-recognition machine, evolved over the millennia. Ray Kurzweil: "Humans are far more skilled at recognizing patterns than in thinking through logical combinations, so we rely on this aptitude for almost all of our mental processes. Indeed, pattern recognition comprises the bulk of our neural circuitry. These facilities make up for the extremely slow speed of human neurons." (quoted in Steven Johnson's Emergence). We evolved to see connections.

And there is some research that indicates that dopamine levels in the brain enhance pattern recognition. In a New Scientist article, "People with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find significance in coincidences, and pick out meaning and patterns where there are none." ("Paranormal beliefs linked to brain chemistry", New Scientist, July 27, 2002.)

To the skeptic, Carl Jung's "synchronicity" is an example of apophenia. Synchronicity suggests an acausal connection between phenomena, that two apparently unrelated events reveal something. (Again, see The Skeptic's Dictionary entry on Jung for an unsympathetic view.)

Saying the world can only be understood empirically, and that empirical tests are the basis of knowledge, is problematic without taking into account the role of the brain in organizing sense data into recognizable phenomena. Inasmuch as consciousness has evolved (and continues to evolve), that science has passed through various "paradigms" since Copernicus and Galileo, and that there are "qualitative" modes of scientific practice in addition to quantitative or deductive modes suggests at least that we keep an open mind about ways to knowledge.

In this vein, one would have to say exactly what "meaning" or "meaningfulness" is, in light of coincidence and metaphor, before dismissing Jung. (Per Agent Dale Cooper: "When two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention." or "Coincidence and fate figure largely in our lives. Ah! Damn good coffee!" I could swear I remember him saying "Never laugh in the face of coincidence", but that could be false or true-but-clouded memory.)

The ability of the brain to see patterns, or connections, or to make connections or leaps between two seemingly unrelated concepts -- e.g., "all the world's a stage" -- is a basic, perhaps universal, human device for exploring and understanding the new, the complex, the difficult, and perhaps the unfathomable.

Along these lines, see the Journal for Patterns Recognised: "The Journal for Patterns Recognised is a journal dedicated to the study of pattern recognition. We can recognise sheep in clouds, faces in 4 well-placed rocks and a tree in a mathematically produced set of lines. This ability to recognise familiar objects in formlessness is said to be the engine behind imagination. Therefore we understand pattern recognition gone wrong as the well from which human culture, roughly defined as the framework of socially accepted interpretations of the real, flows." For more, see the background essay, "Why a Journal for Patterns Recognised?!".

The "perceived connection where none exists", a pattern recognized where no obvious or detected material interaction is taking place between the two nodes. But a connection erupts in the mind, rich in meaning maybe, revealing something. Something has happened.

This past spring, under the Kennedy Expressway on Fullerton Avenue here in Chicago, someone observed that the water dripping down the concrete underpass had created a form like Mary, the Mother of God. There is something inherently un-testable (and what does it say about someone who wants to test it?) about images of the Virgin Mary anywhere, but regardless, the pattern recognized becomes in itself a material force as people act on the idea. As word of the Virgin of the Kennedy spread, hundreds came to pray and leave flowers, candles and other offerings. "Faithful Call Image On Underpass Wall 'Beautiful' Others Call Image Salt Stain." A few weeks later, police charged Victor Gonzalez with defacing public property by writing "Big Lie" across the image with shoe polish. Police then asked the Illinois Department of Transportation to paint over the image to prevent further trouble.

There is a network of interactions, let's say, independent of human consciousness. Say salty melted snow running off of a highway, rusting steel, dripping down concrete. Molecules interacting, the workings of ice and salt, bonds breaking and re-forming, themselves influenced by Winter yielding to Spring, by the motion of Earth around the Sun. (Is there not something wonder-full even in that process?) And then there is the interconnection of consciousness with sense perceptions, the sparking of recognition of a pattern on the concrete, yielding meanings, shared by some, contested by others. Another network, this one of ideas, thoughts, understandings. Why not the Goddess revealing herself, exerting herself, in the most mundane, dismal, anti-Nature of places, the expressway underpass, the literal underside of another network, the infrastructure of Global Warming and Planet Destruction? Or maybe the pattern recognized is "just" illusion, or dis-illusion. Prompted by the hunger of the dispossessed who beg under that underpass, and the workers crawling along Fullerton in perpetual rush-hour Chicago traffic on the way home from another day of mind-dulling, soul-stealing work; the hunger for a Sign that they might achieve a future worth living in? Or does it say that that which you long for is nothing, void of meaning, a stain? Which is the Big Lie?

Something in the "perceived connection", even if it is not agreed upon by all parties.


jd

More on maps

Related to the post yesterday about maps -- I brought along a GPS receiver, compass and topo maps on a trip to the Colorado canyonlands a couple of years ago. I wanted to work on reading maps, but it quickly became clear to me that experiencing a place through a map is not the same as experiencing the place. Certain areas of the brain fired when looking at the grids and topo lines and the numbers and drawing lines on the map, trying to convert the mapwork into geological features. But the map could not come close to the rich sensuousness of sitting and listening, hearing, smelling, seeing the place.

This is the difference between the network diagram and the process (I hesitate to even use "network" as synonym for "process", as "network" suggests that a derivation or abstraction has already taken place). "Knowing the process" versus knowing the map.

But... Last February my brother and I were tramping around the Desert National Wildlife Refuge north of Las Vegas. He could look at a topo, and project a hint of what would be there. He could read a map. In its proper place, the map was a powerful tool. In itself not a complete knowledge of what was being represented, but contributing a piece to the puzzle of understanding.

jd

Open access to state-collected geocode data

Making maps is a kind of networking activity. Or seeing networks is a kind of mapping activity. Accurate maps have been one of those state-sponsored activities critical to social development. One might argue that all geo-information is a public good (inasmuch as all intellectual activity is, in that it always takes place in a social context, i.e. interconnected with everyone else throughout time). If that is too much to accept, at lease state collected geodata is a public good -- after all you paid for it. Geodata -- the raw material of maps ("information with a spatial component" per the site mentioned below) -- is a source of power: where development is taking place, where the environment is being destroyed or thriving, where voters are and are not, etc. It is the quantitative data used to get a snapshot perspective of what is happening, towards developing effective strategies for change. Knowing the network as a first step to transforming the network.

The Open Geodata project is an effort to pry this public data out of the hands of just the state agencies (UK-focused for now it looks). In addition they sponsor projects to create copyright-free street-level maps, a kind of popular mapping initiative. The project is part of the Open Knowledge Foundation Network.

The Open Geodata project has a manifesto which they invite you to sign.

jd

Here's an interesting abstract: "Four correlates of complex behavioral networks: Differentiation, behavior, connectivity, and compartmentalization: Carving networks at their joints"

[The full paper is available here.]

The authors identify two properties of networks -- "selected"-ness and "behavioral". The first property is present if the network developed or evolved under "selective pressure" (e.g., as in "natural selection", where some features would tend to persist because of environmental or other pressures). The second property is present if the network demonstrates "network-level behaviors".

Per the authors, networks with these properties are similar in four respects:

Differentiation: The networks accommodate more types of structure through a variety of types of nodes

Behaviors: Networks demonstrate a greater repertoire of behaviors through an increased number of lower-level behavior types

Connectivity: The networks tend to maintain a consistent network diameter as they grow, via increased connectivity

Compartmentalization: For efficiency sake, the networks tend to become increasingly "parcellated"


jd

"...Merleau-Ponty said that we live 'out there among things,' in a kind of communion with the world: 'there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.' [apply appropriate gender transformations - jd] Through their descriptions of pre-reflective experience, then, the phenomenologists disclose human existence as a network of relations; our being is not locked up inside us, but is in fact spread throughout this web of worldly interactions in which our existence continually unfolds." -- Andy Fisher, Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life. 2002. State University of New York Press. (p 11)

How to know the network?

"Network science" has been pitched as an alternative to "reductionist" science. That is, after dissecting processes into ever smaller units, and trying to understand the process by understanding the units, "knowing" the process still eluded scientists.

Now we are close to knowing just about everything there is to know about the pieces. [an absurd claim, no? - jd] But we are as far as we have ever been from understanding nature as a whole. Indeed the reassembly turned out to be much harder than scientists anticipated. [!] The reason is simple. Riding reductionism, we run into the hard wall of complexity. (Barabasi, Linked, p6)

"Network science" then comes to the rescue, revealing the laws of self-organization: per Barabasi, complexity has a "strict architecture", and its name is network.

One might argue though that this is just a deeper reductionism. Instead of just the parts -- now called "nodes", we add another abstract fundamental, the "link" to represent the richness of interconnection (reducing that to a bundle of discrete threads, each of which can be examined and presumably understood). Simple mechanics are enhanced to include another order of properties. Concerning ecology, a discipline that is heavy on interconnection, William Brinton writes "ecological perspectives within the sciences often only strengthen reductionistic directions, since they provide important details about relationships, which in turn help 'fine tune' the existing mechanical models." ("Environment as Data versus 'Being': Is Goetheanism possible in the West?", http://www.ifgene.org/brinton.htm)

In a harsh critique of "complexity", Steve Talbott argues that the more abstract theories and observations become, the more they become about nothing. "The problem with a scientific method based on maximum generalization and abstraction is that the more it succeeds -- that is, the more general and abstract its results become -- the shallower they tend to be. They tell us less and less about the particular contexts we wish to understand... In our drive toward generality and abstraction, we end up with what we ask for... We will get a theory that 'connects' diverse things, but in the process loses the things we are connecting." ("The Lure of Complexity", http://www.natureinstitute.org/pub/ic/ic7/complexity.htm)

How much simpler can the abstraction "network" become? The network diagram is to the actual process or phenomena as a stick figure is to a painting, or really, to the phenomena represented in the painting.

In general, modeling and abstraction are useful tools and part of the dialectical process of coming to understand phenomena, assuming that the researcher makes the return trip to the phenomena. Goethe's assertion that "the phenomenon is the theory" is a powerful insight. The abstraction is not the phenomenon.

A phenomenon cannot be understood as a "network". The "network" reduction is an abstraction. Certainly (I think) the "network" reduction, as part of a bigger project of isolation, focus, and then re-assembly, re-contexting and re-imagination, can lead to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. Ultimately, though, "knowing the network" is a process of imaginative participation in the phenomenon. In part this is because the "complexity" of the interactions can only be grasped imaginatively, and in part because the network is a process in time, developing, changing, growing or dying or both, and likewise only graspable in the imagination. "Knowing the network" is a challenge that requires a holistic approach, a holistic scientific method.

Okay, so I am struggling through the ideas above. See The Nature Institute's website for more on what has been called a phenomenological approach to Nature, or holistic science, qualitative science, Goethean science, etc.

- jd

You don't need silicon to calculate poverty - The Clash

Levy-Bruhl, quoted in Owen Barfield's, Saving the Appearances (Wesleyan, 1988, pp 28-35): "... in other words, the connecting links of the representations are given, as a rule, in the representations themselves." (in reference to "primitive" cultures). Also, "The collective representations and interconnections which constitute such a mentality are governed by the law of participation..."

Barfield goes on to summarize "participation", or "original participation" as described by Levy-Bruhl and other anthropologists as an "awareness we no longer have, of an extra-sensory link between the percipient and the representations. This involves, not only that we think differently, but that the phenomena (collective representations) themselves are different."

But Barfield then corrects this idea: "[W]e do, in fact, still participate in the phenomena, though for the most part we do it unconsciously. We can only remind ourselves of that participation by beta-thinking [a sort of "thinking about thinking about representations" - jd] and we forget it as soon as we leave off."

On the other side of the negation of the negation is a "final participation", but more on that later.

Here is a very impressive website:

NOEMA.ORG

'NOEMA is a website devoted to culture-new technologies interrelations and influences. "Culture" also means "habits", "lifestyles", "communications", "art", "society", "economy", "media", "philosophy"..., while "new technologies" should be intended in a broader meaning than the digital realm.'

jd

"Power to the Edges: Trends and Opportunities in Online Civic Engagement" , by Jillaine Smith, Martin Kearns and Allison Fine, is a very good snapshot, taken May '05, of the state of online activism. Some of the key findings for organizations in the report:

-- design a "connectivity strategy" as opposed to a "technology strategy"

-- be "nimble and quick" with incorporating new opportunities provided by new technology

-- "push power to the edges": change the nature of the relationship with the people organization's seek to engage

-- build "network-centric leadership", the complement to "power to the edges", where the "edges" are able to contribute, collaborate, act, grow, lead etc.


jd

This is a posting that I did a while back to a now-defunct list, but it still is relevant. I have started a page of network properties, a catalog or glossary of sorts. Let me know of any additions or clarifications, the info below is the kind of stuff I am collecting.

Here's a link to a paper that looks at "different classes of small-world networks":

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/21/11149

The authors identify three kinds of small-world networks, based on the nature of the distribution of links. If I understand what they are saying, the cost of adding links (e.g., adding new routes to an airport vs new links to a website), and ongoing ability to add links ("aging", e.g., movie actor collaborations decay over time as an actor ages, also one might add an organization's ability to attract new members/connections -- I think this is another way of describing the "fitness" of nodes; new nodes may be very desirable to attach to, even though initially they do not have many links) will result in different kinds of small-world networks.

These two factors interfere w/ the "preferential attachment" phenomena of network growth (all things being equal, new nodes tend to attach to already well-connected nodes), resulting in the different classes of "small worlds".

jd

Network-centric Advocacy is a great blog by Marty Kearns devoted to "advocacy strategy for the age of connectivity." Okay it has a very generous write-up of the globalization and networks paper that I did, but regardless, this blog is an excellent collection of commentary and links by someone who, it is evident from the content, is deeply involved in the practice that he writes about. Marty is the co-founder and executive director of the Green Media Toolshed

Read the Network-Centric Advocacy Concept Paper by Marty, for background on the thought behind the blog:

The challenge to grassroots organizers and advocacy communication strategists is to match mobilizing and advocacy efforts with these new behaviors while also exploiting the advantages provided by emerging technologies and communications mediums. Network-centric advocacy is the adaptation of advocacy and traditional grassroots organizing to the age of connectivity.

...

An alternative to relying entirely on the current organizational-based advocacy model is to create a hybrid to supplement the strengths of organizations with the flexibility and viral potential of direct action. This hybrid is built on the availability of cheap transportation, free phone systems, new technology tools, secure online collaboration tools and exploiting service industry that was built for small businesses all for network campaigns. These are the characteristics of our age connectivity and they can now be used to “wire” together the movement or coalitions. Network-Centric Advocacy demands a simple set of actions to build and maintain connections among campaign assets (staff, volunteers, expertise, tools and organizations) so that campaign leaders can count on the response of the network in a predictable manner.

...

The adaptation of a networked approach will enable our staffs and volunteers to shift into campaigns where they make the most difference. The network will provide the best resources to promising initiatives that evolve out of the creativity from the field. Ideas will compete for help in a new marketplace that moves faster and learns quicker. The movement leadership will be more diverse and the campaigns will be increasingly difficult to counter and predict. Ultimately, the movement will see improvements in policy and stronger protections for the environment.

This is just a taste. The paper is a very practical, thoughtful consideration of both the practical problems of network-centric struggle, and the absolute necessity of solving those problems to move forward. And in particular, because it addresses the realm of idea-dessemination, it provides concrete ideas about the new tools and the need for a new doctrine in the battle for hearts and minds.

jd

Here's a very interesting posting about links:

The political sociology of golf in South Asia

jd

Space, time and interconnection bits:

the indivisibility of cause and effect

interpenetration of opposites

dynamic simultaneity

synchronicity

the compression of time and space, time dilation

"Capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier. Thus the creation of the physical conditions of exchange -- of the means of communication and transport -- the annihilation of space by time -- becomes an extraordinary necessity for it." (Marx, Grundrisse)

'For Massey, "space-time" is a "configuration of social relations within which the specifically spatial may be conceived of as an inherently dynamic simultaneity."'
(Drew Whitelegg, "The Big Squeeze: The Time and Space of Flight Attendants Since 9/11", citing Doreen Massey's 1994 Space, Place and Gender.

Network as an expression of juxtaposition and simultaneity, as counterposed to linear and temporal. Found on the Internet: "We are at a moment ... when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein" (Foucault, 1986; found in "How Space got its groove back: Geography and poststructuralism", lecture notes by Deborah Thien, University of Edinburgh).

Social relations as the interconnections within the social network. Some asymmetrical ones, in terms of social power: Property-propertyless, boss-worker, man-woman, white-black, urban-rural, etc. (Links have a direction property)

"This 'perceptual revolution' was the result of the fracturing of perspective into multiple viewing points in the early years of the 20th century. It creates a "new perceptual field" that is "'multiperspectival and environmental'" (Lowe 14) and where linear perspective comes to be replaced by the disorientation of navigation in simulated and multidimensional space. It creates a new way of looking appropriate to the speed, shape and space of the network as it exists in the instantaneousness of now time. By uniting space and time within the framework of vision, it also takes the onus off the 'female' as the guilty chaotic element within a binary, devalued (by the patriarchy) spatial system. And, in fact, rather than privileging the temporal aspects of the system, Doreen Massey argues that time is an emergent property of a network's spatial dimensions (268)." (from Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics: The Archival Text, Digital Narrative and the Limits of Memory by Carolyn G. Guertin, University of Toronto; emphases mine)

Today the Phil the mailman delivered a copy of Jack Hirschman's Arcanes, a French/English volume of nineteen or so of Jack's "Arcane" poems. Jack Hirschman is a great soul, poet, artist and revolutionary, a case of the "prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house" in that he is better known, received, appreciated, or so it seems, in Europe that in the U.S. Here are a couple of links to Jack's poetry:

"Poetry for a New America"
Il Narratore (includes some audio files)

Anyway, in the introduction to Arcanes by Gilles Vachon, something leaped out at me. Vachon identifies "arcane" as coming from the Qabalah tradition (here's my rough translation):

"The 'arcanization' is a fundamental enterprise of the Zohar (a remarkable 13th century mystical text by Moses of Leon), which affirms the principle: divine secrets are found in all texts and in each letter of the Bible. One knows that this position on symbolic writing interested many investigators of the spirit, from de Lessing to Tzara, with Netwon, Kafka, Borges and Andre Breton in between... [and this part is sketchy] (Recall that Jacques Derrida owed to the Kabbalah many of his intuitions about textuality and multiple meanings (?plurivocité?), that Jack Hirschman and others discovered, and that, like Maurice Blanchot, were inspired by the vision of symbols and textual interpretations. [il en a été conforté dans sa vision des symboles et son herméneutics])

(In the mystical Kabbalah/Qabalah tradition, meaning is assigned to each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Further, numeric values are assigned to letters, so that words have a numeric value, and so some added meaning may be seen to exist between words of the same numeric value. Each letter is attributed to one of the 22 lines, or paths, connecting the 10 Sephiroth on the mnemonic Tree of Life (a kind of spiritual network diagram, with Tiphareth, the central sixth Sephiroth, as a superconnector or hub). Each letter has also been attributed to one of the 22 Major Arcana or Trumps of Tarot. Per Regardie, Cordavero describes the Sephiroth as "vessels of force or categorical ideas through which the consciousness of the universe expresses itself".)

Jack wrote an essay in 1971 called Kabbal Surrealism "trying to put together the many strains of French Surrealism, Negritude, North American poetics and politics, along with the sort of hip kabbalism I was involved with" at the time.

What struck me was this idea of divine or inspired writing not being specific to Hebrew or the Bible, but to any inspired writer, to the artist. The process of conveying meaning via text, where ideas are stored in ink-on-page, to be re-created in the mind of the reader, with levels of meaning, and meanings that may be hidden on first or second or fiftieth reading, and then revealed not because you now have the secret decoder ring, but because you understand things differently, "the understanding of a person is conditioned by his or her capacity to understand" (from "The Food of Paradise", in Indries Shah's Tales of the Dervishes). The power of poetry. For the reader, diving through the text, reaching that which inspires, and being inspired thereby.

Well in writing this down the though doesn't sound so striking perhaps, or so new as it seemed at the time it popped up in my brain.

From an interview w/ Jack that appeared in the wonderful journal Left Curve:

Poetry is ultimately what belongs to all. That is, everyone is a poet. People still reject that idea only because they have never lived in the historical conditions where that truth is realized. That's one of the reasons I struggle for the material transformation of society, to bring about that spiritual consciousness of the fact that everyone is a poet. In addition, poetry is the expression that carries within its moment much more than that moment, pointing ever toward a future through its rhythmic cries and revealed heartbeats. (from Interview with Jack Hirschman by Marco Nieli)

In a testament to the power of ideas, here's this description of the Zohar:

Moses Deleon's discovery generally went unnoticed by the world. But it was a significant turning point for mankind, as the Light of the Zohar radiated into the world for the first time in history... [T]he energy emanating from its mystical text sparked the collective unconscious of a generation. The power of the Zohar propelled the world out of the Dark Ages. (from the Kabbalah Centre website)

Which is a way to see Jack's poems.

(Jack and David Meltner are giving a talk on the Kabbalah at City Lights in San Francisco, June 9, 2005)

jd

"And what is the very essence of poetry if it is not this 'metaphorical language' -- this marking of the before unapprehended relations of things?" - Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction.

Goethean science / holistic science

"Goethean science" is a holistic approach to science (as opposed to analytical and reductionist), named such because of the method associated with Goethe and described in his science writings. The Goethean approach to the total process overlaps with the dialectical approach, of seeing processes not as a collection of parts, but as relationships and interconnections.

Here is a quote from Henri Bortoft's book, The Wholeness of Nature (subtitled "Goethe's way toward a science of conscious participation in Nature"), Lindisfarne Books, 1996.

"[A] relationship cannot be experienced as such in the analytical mode of consciousness. Since in this mode it is the elements which are related that stand out in experience, the relationship itself can only seem to be a shadowy abstraction to the intellectual mind. The perception of a relationship as such would require a simultaneous perception of the whole, and hence the restructuring of consciousness into the holistic mode... The perception of a necessary connection is the perception of a relationship as a real factor in the phenomenon, instead of being only a mental abstraction added on to what is experienced by the senses. The reality of a relationship, the necessity of a connection, is not experienced as such either by the senses alone or by the intellectual mind. Hence any attempt to understand this reality in terms of these faculties is bound to find that it vanishes from the phenomenon itself and appears to be only a subjective belief." (99)

[Note: My criticism of at least this part of Bortoft's book is that he does not say how or why there is a necessary connection in the phenomenon he cites as examples, like certain structures in mammals, only that there is such a thing.]

The Goethean approach is seen as a way around Hume's assertion that, because there is no sense impression from which necessary connection can be derived, "necessary connections" do not exist. For Hume, two events appeared "conjoined" (or in "constant conjunction") and that was it -- nothing "necessary" or necessarily "connected" about them, only something "habitually" seen, "contingent correlations".

I don’t see what Hume's problems was -- an experimentally repeatable phenomenon given the same conditions or field of operation, seems enough to perceive or know the necessary connection. As Engels wrote (in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy):

The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical crotchets is practice — namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable "thing-in-itself". The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained just such "things-in-themselves" until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the "thing-in-itself" became a thing for us — as, for instance, alizarin, the coloring matter of the madder, which we no longer trouble to grow in the madder roots in the field, but produce much more cheaply and simply from coal tar.

Setting aside Engels' sense of "things for us" and "making it serve our purposes", and the sort of objectification and alienation from nature that it implies, there are two methods here of apprehending "necessary connection". On the one hand, a Goethean, method arising out of non-analytic mental activity -- holistic, right-brain, intuited apprehension. On the other, a method arising from interacting with matter (call it "practice", "labor" or "production"; or "fiddling", "experimenting", or "hacking").

My interest in "necessary connection" has to do with "laws" as "necessary connections", and the bundle of laws present in a phenomenon (or network) is the law system. And the law system determines the behaviors, the nature of the network.

Although "network" sounds so schematic and technical.

jd

Here's a link to the paper that I am giving at the Global Studies Association meeting in Knoxville tomorrow (5/13/05) on networks and globalization:

"Networks and globalization" (html) / (pdf)

jd

Here are a couple of other online resources, these on economics and networks:

Economics of Networks (This is the website of Nicholas Economides at the Stern School of Business, New York University.


Network Economics series from the Social Science Research Network (link copied from the "Economics of Networks" site).

jd

Here's a link to an interesting discussion between writer Joline Blais and artist Jon Ippolito on "Evaluating Collaborative Work, Interauthorship, Open Content".

jd

I realize this is old news, but the story is illustrative of (1) the vulnerability of modern systems to a network-based offensive strategy and (2) another way that electronics-based society, or at least a capitalist one, leads towards the police(d) state.

Dissertation Could Be Security Threat: Student's Maps Illustrate Concerns About Public Information By Laura Blumenfeld, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, July 8, 2003; Page A01.

For his geography dissertation, George Mason U. grad student Sean Gorman mapped the businesses and industry, and overlayed them with the fiber-optic networks that connect them. Although based on publicly available information, the work assembles in one place a map to obvious places to snip-snip and shut down sections of the economy. "For this, Gorman has become part of an expanding field of researchers whose work is coming under scrutiny for national security reasons. His story illustrates new ripples in the old tension between an open society and a secure society."

jd

On the Limits of the Limits of Networking

Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker's essay on "The Limits of Networking" highlights some of the weaknesses of the discussion of "networks" and "networking" and the "network form" on the Left.

Galloway and Thacker's piece is a response to another piece by Gert Lovink and Florian Schneider, "Notes on the State of Networking" that appeared in the February, 2004 makeworld paper #4. The title is a pun on "state" as a physics term and "state" as a political term, as in the exercise of class power. "Networks", they write, "are the emerging form of organization in our time." But like assertions that we participate in a "knowledge economy" or live in the "information society", such statements are redundancies. All organizations are networks of some sort; an economy is impossible without knowledge, no matter what the level of technological development; society without information would not be a society.

I am being deliberately obtuse here, because there is common conflation of "networks" and the "network form". "Network" is device for talking about any process as the interaction of nodes via links -- a universal architectural structure, a powerful device for comprehending phenomena. "Network form" attempts to describe a means of organization in contrast to "hierarchical form". Discussions about the "network form" fail to appreciate the insights that network science has to offer. The result is a shallow conception (networks are conceived as "ahistorical entities" per Galloway and Thacker) doomed to political and organizational failure.

Per Lovink + Scheider:

"A radical critique of the information society implies analyzing the passages from the state of territory and the state of population to the state of networked globality or: Info-Empire....Rather than a simple application to improve life or increase efficiency, life becomes intrinsically networking and networking comes alive as unconditional attribute of social existence... The ultimate goal of networking has been, and still is, to free the user from the bonds of locality and identity. Power [counterposed to "networking" jd] responds to the presence of increasing mobility and communications of the multitudes with attempts to regulate them in the framework of traditional regimes that cannot be abandoned, but need to be reconfigured from scratch and recompiled against the networking paradigm: borders and property, labour and recreation, education and entertainment industries undergo radical transformations."

For Galloway + Thacker, their "point of departure" with L+S is that "Info-Empire" "must be defined at the level of the medium itself." They critique the popular conception of networks amongst the new new Left -- really, the "network form":

"In many current political discussions, networks are seen as the new paradigm of social and political organization. The reason is that networks [that is, the "network form" - jd] exhibit a set of properties that distinguishes them from the more centralized power structures. These structures are often taken to be merely abstract, formal aspects of the network -- which is itself characterized as a kind of meta-structure... What we end up with is a 'metaphysics of networks.'... What we question is not the network concept itself for, as a number of network examples show, they can indeed be effective modes of struggle. What we do question is the undue and exclusive reliance on the metaphysics of the network, as if this ahistorical concept legitimizes itself by merely existing."

I think G+T correctly challenge the fetishization of networks. Without a deepening of understanding of networks -- that they are expressions of a "law system" that binds the network to an operative environment -- we are left with the "metaphysics of networks". By "operative environment" I mean certain conditions which exist which render the necessary connections -- the law system -- operable. In the social world, this would be, for example, the mode of production, or more broadly, "history". The connections in a pre-agricultural economy are not constrained by the law of the maximization of profit that defines a capitalist economy. The links of "worker/boss" or property are, in the language of computers, no-ops -- not operative.

In the modern environment of electronics. with all of the production and communication possibilities they enable ("to free the user from the bonds of locality and identity"), the contest is not over "power" vs "network", but rather the law system itself that defines or gives a particular character to the network. The political challenge is to overthrow the law system, to re-make the network.

Galloway and Thacker use the narrower concept of "protocols" as the "what" that defines the network. In computer networking terms, "protocols" are the agreed upon rules that nodes use to enable links or communication. An agreement on protocol is a pre-requisite for links to be established. So in this sense, the protocols will determine, to a great extent, the nature of the links and hence the dynamics of the network. Political work then, needs to be "counter-protocological." And they clarify, the action is not counter-anything. "Counter-" implies reaction, restoration, conservation, preservation. Rather, political work needs to be "hypertrophic" -- pushing beyond, creating the new, exploring and claiming the undiscovered country.

Protocol is really a kind of grammar, or syntax. Inasmuch as the syntactical rules of language constrain our imagination, I can accept the notion of protocol as a form of control. But at the same time, communication is impossible without syntax. As Florian Cramer noted in her response on nettime-l to the G+T piece:

But as with any play, consisting of a ruleset and its free execution, control is never total to the extent that it wouldn't permit freedom... Freedom and control thus are not mutually exclusive, but mutually dependent on each other. To envision communication systems without control - i.e. languages without rules, networks without protocols - and find them desirable, would be utterly an infantilist vision of a pre-language paradise.

To focus in on "protocol" as the description of what defines the network misdirects, or does not go far enough. In computer networks, protocols are probably some of the most neutral aspects of the network, and to push the metaphor into the social network obscures too much. "Law system" is total and comprehensive, and not "neutral" in the way that "protocols" can be read as neutral, as the floor on which the great social contest plays out.

For the network of society, the fundamental relationship of private property in the age of electronics defines the network behavior. "Private property" describes only one possible mode of linking. If "private property" is the protocol in the most general metaphoric sense -- a system of constraints on the interactions between human beings -- well then bring on the counter-protocological practice and lets hypertrophe the network.

In any case, it's that understanding of network dynamics, the historical context and constraints and opportunities -- the law system that informs, binds, sets boundaries, describes, defines etc. etc. that seems to have been missing in the Discussion. And without the comprehension of those network dynamics -- what is and what needs to be done -- progress will be impossible.

"Close Doesn't Always Count in Winning Games" by Benedict Carey (New York Times, 3/7/05):

[S]ocial scientists who have studied group performance under pressure say that often it is decentralized groups (like the Yankees) that prove more resilient than strongly connected ones (like the Red Sox); they are better able to weather outside criticism and internal quarrels.

Evidence from personality profiles and from studies of military, corporate and space flight crews suggests that looser ties between group members can be a strength, if the team includes individuals who can generate collective emotion when needed. And the Yankees have several of them.

Some other key points:

-- "Winning is more likely to create team unity than vice versa, Torre has said repeatedly, and the evidence backs him up, said Dr. Richard Moreland, a professor of psychology and management at the University of Pittsburgh."

-- "When a common purpose is shared, loosely tied groups can function better than strongly bonded ones when it comes to containing dissent or bickering, research suggests." It allows individuals to withdraw from squabbles without disrupting the group's work.

-- "On a tightly knit team, by contrast, a falling out between key members can divide a squad, forcing people to take sides, psychologists say."

-- "Whether such independent, loosely tied people ultimately succeed as a unit depends not only on strong management, researchers say, but on the presence of individual group members who can circulate through disparate parts of the team, reduce conflict and help generate collective spirit when it is needed."

This flurry of activity is the result of poking around and seeing what there is on the net regarding networks, etc. And reflects to a great extent on my ignorance or dis-connectedness from the discussions that are taking place both in science and political circles. For example, from a year ago...

"The Limits of Networking" (also available in a prettier form at c u l t u r e k i t c h e n by Alex Galloway and Eugene Thacker is a response to a piece by Gert Lovink and Florian Schneider, "Notes on the State of Networking" which may also have appeared on the nettime-l list; the link is to the makeworlds site, previously mentioned in this blog. A response (also on nettime-l) to the Galloway/Thacker piece by Florian Cramer is good.

Comments will be forthcoming.

On the horizon: The Quantum Theory of Trust: How Networks Work and Organizations Behave; The Secret of Mapping and Managing Human Relationships. Anticipated publication date: September, 2005. There's an outline on the announcement page. Network science used to understand and enhance corporate culture; concepts look to apply to any organization.

jd

A bit more on network motifs:

A taxonomy of network motifs exists. For some clear descriptions and diagrams, see Network motifs. This page describes gene regulation, but it's not too hard to extrapolate from motifs like "autoregulatory", "feedforward", "multi-component loop", etc.

To understand how complex transcriptional regulatory networks produce gene expression programs, it is useful to identify the simplest units of commonly used network architecture. We imagine that these simple units, or network motifs, provide specific regulatory capacities such as positive and negative feedback loops. The frequency with which cells use individual motifs reveals the regulatory strategies that were selected during evolution. These motifs can be assembled into network structures that help explain how a complex gene expression program is regulated.

(from site above).

Network motifs

Connections or actions between nodes have a property of "direction". A can act on B, B can act on A, or A can act on B and B can act on A. In dialectical terms the latter case would be an interaction or interconnection. Throw in a third node, and the number of possible connection types grows to 13?; add a fourth, and the number jumps to 199. (I'm not sure of the math of this, the numbers are from the article referenced below.)

In a 2002 Science article, "Network Motifs: Simple Building Blocks of Complex Networks" six researchers studied various types of networks, and found "the striking appearance of motifs in networks representing a broad range of natural phenomenon."

The researchers studied various real-world networks, including gene regulation, neurons, food webs, electronic circuits, and the World Wide Web. Out of the range of all of the possible connections types, a small number of connection types -- that is, motifs -- showed up much more frequently than the others. Not all networks, though, have the same motifs. The presence of different motifs in different networks suggests a way of distinguishing types of networks.

"None of the network motifs shared by the food webs matched the motifs found in the gene regulation networks or the World Wide Web. Only one of the food web consensus motifs [their term, consensus motifs are "motifs shared by networks of a given type" - jd] also appeared in the neuronal network. Different motifs were found in electronic circuits with different functions. This suggests that motifs can define broad classes of networks, each with specific types of elementary structures. The motifs reflect the underlying processes that generated each type of network [my emphasis - jd]; for example, food webs evolved to allow a flow of energy from the bottom to the top of the food chains, whereas gene regulation and neuron networks evolve to process information. Information processing seems to give rise to significantly different structures than does energy flow.

Two more observations: (1) "In general, the larger the network is the more significant the motifs tend to become;" and (2) motifs "may be interpreted as structures that arise because of the special constraints under which the network has evolved."

Somehow this concept of "motif" is related to the concept of the "law system" (or, the necessary connections) that govern or constrain the interactions between nodes in the network. Or perhaps they are evidence of the existence of the law system? (These would be in part "the special constraints under which the network has evolved" -- internal constraints, while there are also external or environmental constraints as well?)

jd

This is a column I did a few years ago, relevant to this blog.

jd

---

The dumbest networks

Found on the Internet: The best network is the dumbest network. But... it's not the most profitable...

So we won't see it.

That's the implied conclusion in David Isenberg and David Weinberger's online essay "The Paradox of the Best Network".

A "dumb network" is a network that is optimized to move bits -- any kind of bits, all bits -- as fast as possible. "Only then is the network truly open to any and all services that want to use it, no matter how innovative or how unexpected. In the best network, the services live at the edges of the network and use the network to transport bits; they do not rely on any special characteristics of the network itself."

But, they argue, the simpler the network, the easier it is for any network operator to provide the service -- capacity grows, prices fall, all is good. Right? Except.

Telecom companies can't make money that way. (Witness the telecom carcasses along the road over the past two years: Northpoint, PSINet, CAIS/Ardent Communications, to name a few; and a number of companies like Global Crossing are teetering on the curb).

The telecom companies make money off of complicated, premium services that aren't versatile. So they have no incentive to develop the kind of networks that (a) serve the most people and (b) realize the possibilities of a well-networked world.

Isenberg and Weinberger argue that "[i]ncumbent communications company clout has forestalled delivery of a variety of radically simplified, extremely affordable technologies," like wireless and fiber optic networks.

It gets better: "Telephone companies are not the only institutions goaded by new network technology. We can see from the reaction to today's Internet that the Paradox of the Best Network is not kind to the recording industry, to book publishers, or to any other group that makes its living by controlling access to content. These groups have already called in the lawyers and lobbyists to protect their current business models. Nor will the new network be popular with any institution — economic, political or religious — that seeks to shield itself from conflicting cultures and ideas."

The apologists for our great economic system like to argue that yeah, capitalism might be rough, but the competitive spirit ensures that new technologies get developed and deployed. The paradox of the best network is just another example that this is a Big Lie.

Capitalism cannot make the most of new technologies. The above is just one more example. The best networks are not being built because they are too hard to make money from. An economic system that favors maximum profit over maximum satisfaction, maximum usability, maximum access, maximum information, etc. etc. is a bundle of chains on society, keeping it down.

Isenberg and Weinberger pose the obvious question: "But if the best network is also the cheapest and hardest to make money from, who will build it?"

The essay goes on to propose some ways to ensure the development of big, dumb networks. They plainly state that "Arguably, building the best network is a Public Good." But between the rock of telecom capitalism and the hard place of Enron-ized government -- here's where we need everyone's imagination and initiative.

What kind of society do we want? We have a world to win, And, well, nothing to lose but our chains.

* * *

Another reason why capitalism sucks: Harold Russell, the disabled World War II vet and non-actor who won an Academy Award for his remarkable performance in William Weller's classic movie "The Best Years of Our Lives", died in January. He was 88. In 1992 he was forced to sell his Oscar -- he needed the money to pay for his sick wife's medical bills.

Jim Davis
2/01/02



This originally appeared at http://www.lrna.org, now living at http://www.gocatgo.com/jdav/columns/dumbnet.html

Here's the description of a paper that I am planning to do for the The Global Studies Association Annual Conference, May 12 - 15, 2005 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville:

Networks and globalization

"Network" is a popular metaphor for talking about globalization. For the most part, "network" has been just that -- a vague metaphor with many meanings. "Network science", a new cross-discipline offshoot of complexity theory, brings a formality to thinking about network structures. "Network science" concepts like "superconnectors", "preferential attachment", and "small-world effect" are universal in real-world networks, whether they be ecological, social or economic. "Network science" explains both the strengths of globalized capitalism, and its weaknesses. Perhaps more importantly, it provides powerful insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the "network form" of organization, the emerging structure of resistance to globalization.

jd

From Neal Stephenson's The System of the World, the concluding volume of The Baroque Cycle, a great read:

...I saw one or two smoke-rings about the size of a man's hat, propagating across the room, and retaining their shape and vis viva for extraordinary distance. These rings are unlike water-waves, which consist of different water at different times, for smoke rings propagate through clear air, proving that they indeed carry their own substance with them, neither diluting it with, nor dispersing it into, the surrounding atmosphere. And yet there is nothing special about the smoke as such -- it is the same smoke that hangs over battlefields in shapeless clouds. The identity of the smoke ring would appear to consist, not in the stuff of which it is made, for that is commonplace and indifferent, but rather in a particular set of relationships that is brought into being among its parts. It is this pattern of relationships that coheres in space and persists in time and endows the smoke-ring with an identity. Perhaps some similar observation might be made about other entities that we observe, and credit with uniqueness and identity, including even human beings. For the stuff of which we are made is just the common stuff of the world, viz. ordinary gross matter, so that a materialist might say, we are no different from rocks; and yet our matter is imbued with some organizing principle that endows us with identities, so that I may send a letter to Daniel Waterhouse in London in full confidence that, like a smoke ring traversing a battle-field, he has traveled a great distance, and persisted for a long time, and yet is still the same man." (a fictional Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz writing to Daniel Waterhouse; p54)

Some comments on yesterday's massive earthquake off of the coast of Sumatra, and the ensuing tidal waves that have crashed around the Indian Ocean reminded me of some scientist's description of complexity theory (or chaos theory?) that it is deterministic, not predictive. Which I read as "you know something is going to happen, just not when". The earthquake reporting clarifies what constitutes a prediction. This is from a Washington Post article "When Disaster Strikes" (12/27/2004):

[Caltech geologist Kerry Seih] he knew that, generally speaking, it was getting to be about time for another big one.

But a general forecast of a major quake sometime in the coming decades is not the same thing as a prediction. It's not a prediction unless the time window is so narrow that it can incite dramatic changes in the behavior of people who are vulnerable.

No one has a reliable prediction scheme," said Brian Tucker, president of GeoHazards International, a nonprofit group that tries to reduce the toll of natural disasters in developing countries. "Even if they did, the most reliable prediction would be in terms of probability. So you'd be saying that in the next six months, plus or minus three months, an earthquake of magnitude 6, plus or minus one unit, will occur" -- and even there there'd be uncertainty about the exact location.

"The public can't respond to that. What would a mayor do or a governor do with such a probabilistic prediction?" Tucker said.

jd

I'm reading Robert Shiller's book The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century. I thought, from the title, that the books was more reportage of the current state of finance; it turns out to be prescription for dealing with risk through a higher order of financial tools. That is, ideas about fixing capitalism through more capitalism.

Still, there are important concepts outlined in the book. One could argue that risk management is another way of describing the material basis for society or human groups. We have a better chance of surviving together than apart. Capitalism, because of its focus on private property, competition and the individual, that is, by its fundamental law system, creates risk for people. These risks are over and above the natural risks of plagues, hurricanes, locusts, fire, drought, etc. Shiller outlines these risks, in particular risks to individual and national income and risks to savings. New technology adds to the risk mix under capitalism, by endangering old forms of earning income and undermining national economies through the vicissitudes of globalization. But new technology also allows new ways of hedging against risk, and his book describes some hypothetical financial instruments to distribute the risk.

Risk management is really an information game (e.g., the construction of actuarial tables in the 18th century provided the basis for modern insurance). By understanding probabilities of outcomes based on actual data, the cost of risk management can be determined, and priced accordingly. The complexity of risks that can be managed is, per Shiller, a function of the quality (speed, cost) of information technology. Information technology applies in the data collection and analysis department; and again in managing the distribution of shares of risk across a broad market of whoever wants to buy the risk, for some consideration (i.e., speculate). More sophisticated information processing technology means more complicated risks can be managed.

The way out of the destruction of capitalism then is through different kinds of insurance or derivatives for personal income, national income, home prices, etc. Socialism, or communism, is another, more obvious way of managing such risks -- that is, mutual social responsibility, mediated through public, community structures rather than hedge funds and banks.

Shiller's book does highlight the confluence of several themes I find of interest: new technologies allow us to understand or interact w/ processes in more discrete ways -- the pellets of iron have different properties than the ingot. New technologies shrink transaction costs -- the hookup cost (the cost of making a connection) and the transmission cost (the cost of using a connection), the processing cost (the time the node is busy). So more connections can happen. And as more connections happen, the medium exists for emergent properties to flower. These properties will be conditioned by the law system that governs the network/process.

Capitalism allows connections in very specific ways. Its volatility equals risk. Creative destruction, perhaps, but destruction nevertheless. The global may flourish, in an aggregate way, while the local is sacrificed quite brutally. Wealth polarizes. The factories of Canton and Akron are shuttered, while new ones open in Guangdong. The wheatfields of North Dakota lay fallow while those of the Ukraine or Argentina ripen.

Shiller envisions a global system of managing such risks via new financial instruments made possible by new information technology. Much more straightforward solutions have been proposed in the past; he is looking for ways to manage the symptoms while leaving the causes in place.

His argument, I think, is that capitalism allows for creativity, initiative and opportunity that other systems do not. But risk is the enemy of creativity and opportunity (better to go the safe route than the risky one), so managing the risk will allow for more opportunities to be explored, more experiments made, more connections explored, hence more likelihood of good things to happen (emergence). Which all sounds good, but also seems like hoping the wolf becomes a vegetarian.

"The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the military's world wide web for the wars of the future." So starts an article from the Nov. 13, 2004 NY Times, "Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War".

The article describes Pentagon plans for its "Global Information Grid" or GIG, its own secure network to distribute battlefield information. The effort is an aspect of "network-centric warfare" championed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (see the May '04 post on the Nova "Battle Plan Under Fire" show for more). More battlefield information -- from satellites, other units, data archives, etc. -- will in theory allow soldiers to cut through the fog of war; and more real-time information requires more secure bandwidth than is currently available.

As Rumsfeld is quoted: "Possibly the single most transforming thing in our force will not be a weapons system, but a set of interconnections." More interconnections makes for a more efficient force (better use of resources, in particular information); and a network-form foe (e.g., the resistance in Iraq) can be fought most effectively? by a network-form force.

Whether such an approach is in fact effective is still not univerally accepted; it is, however, very expensive. $200 billion by some estimates once the costs for the special radios, satellites, laptops, cabling, routers, etc. are totalled up.

The pros and cons of "force transformation" and "network-centric warfare" have been debated elsewhere; what is significant I think about this article is the construction of a parallel, military-only Internet. The public 'net is apparently insufficient -- too leaky, insecure, narrow, clogged w/ spam and porn to be of use to the military. The current Internet had its roots in Defense, but was never intended to be a military-only infrastructure. One of its potent strengths is its openness, which allows for emergent properties. A closed-network will never achieve that; perhaps the price tag is how you buy security and robustness when you don't have 1/2 billion naked apes pounding on the keyboards. Or maybe the military's private skynet is ultimately unrealistic. As Vincent Cerf notes in the NYT article, "I want to make sure what we realize is vision and not hallucination... There's nothing wrong with having ambitious goals. You just need to temper them with physics and reality."

In Saskia Sassen's book The Global City (2001, Princeton University Press), she describes the (counter-intuitive) process of the formation of major urban centers like New York, London and Tokyo as the command centers of the global economy. I say counter-intuitive because new communication technologies allow for the decentralization of command and control. For a variety of reasons, Sassen argues that the opposite takes place.

Furthermore, these cities become, to some extent, disconnected from the nation-state:

These cities constitute a system rather than merely competing with each other. What contributes to growth in the network of global cities may well not contribute to growth as nations.(9)

She describes the architecture of a global network of cities: key cities as nodes, linked in a variety of ways, including financial flows, communication, travel, and trade.

For Sassen, one of the important reasons for the formation of these global cities are changes in the financial system from the 1980s on, requiring the concentration of firms (and the workers at all levels to support the concentration) in the global cities to make the system work.

That is, the emergence of speculative capital carried with it certain imperatives that contribute not just to globalization, but to the network of globalization. The city nodes provide a concrete reflection of the digitalized connections of 21st century finance.

jd

Media - information networks - noosphere

Here's a link to the freepress site campaign to pressure Sinclair broadcasting to not show the anti-Kerry documentary a few days before the election, or at least to provide equal time for counter-programming:

http://freepress.net/sinclair/

I know this barely scratches the surface of addressing what is wrong w/ the dominant media networks; that Bush vs Kerry is a flimsy set of choices; etc. etc. But on the other hand, that's what is in front of us now, so ... deal with it.

jd

One of the foundation ideas of materialism is that we live in a law-governed universe. And one of the foundation concepts of dialectics (and focal points of this blog) is interconnectedness. Probably the most important type of interconnection is that of cause-and-effect. Here's an excerpt from a recent Nature item of interest:

Is causality an inherent and necessary characteristic of the Universe, or just an illusion produced by the way our brains interpret the world?

It's real, say physicists, who believe they have worked out how the Universe is constructed from the tiniest building-blocks of space-time. The finding could also help the development of a theory of quantum gravity, which would marry the two currently estranged physical theories of the Universe: quantum theory and relativity.

How can the observable universe emerge out of quantum interactions at the tiniest level?

"Physicists have long been trying to figure out how the fuzzy nature of space-time at this tiny scale can give rise to the large four-dimensional Universe we see around us, as described by Einstein's theory of relativity."

In trying to assemble these tiny quanta pieces,

Renate Loll of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and her co-workers have now found a way to assemble the pieces so that they inevitably produce a four-dimensional Universe. Instead of assuming that all tilings are allowed, they impose two constraints.

First, the theory of relativity must apply within each individual tile (so that nothing can travel through it faster than light) and second, the assembly must preserve causality. This means that a piece of space-time cannot be constructed in such a way that an 'event' - some change in the Universe - precedes its cause.

When they enforced these criteria on their calculations, the researchers ended up with universes with three spatial dimensions and one time dimension - just like our own1. It was "like magic", says Loll.

Even more startling, they found that typical universes generated this way started off small and got bigger - they expanded, just like the real Universe has done since the big bang. This was completely unexpected - there was nothing in the tiling rules that seemed to demand it. 'We're completely stunned,' says Loll.

She admits that there's no a priori reason to demand that quantum space-time has to observe causality: the researchers put it into their equations by hand. But that, it seems, is the only way to end up with a realistic Universe.

For the complete item: http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041004/full/041004-17.html

"Without a corresponding theory of behavior -- of dynamics -- a theory of network structure is essentially uninterpretable and therefore of little practical use." (Duncan Watts, Six Degrees, 51)

In an earlier post (6/6/04), I referenced Steven Johnson's Emergence book where he talks about idea revolutions and paradigm shifts in terms of emergence (and by easy extrapolation, as aspects of network behavior).

Here's a relevant story to terrify the kids at bedtime:

"Intelligent design advocates say that teaching students to 'critically analyze' evolution will help give them the skills to 'see both sides' of all scientific issues. And if the Discovery Institute execs have their way, those skills will be used to reconsider the philosophy of modern science itself - which they blame for everything from divorce to abortion to the insanity defense. 'Our culture has been deeply influenced by materialist thought,' says Meyer. 'We think it's deeply destructive, and we think it's false. And we mean to overturn it.'" ("The Crusade Against Evolution", Wired, Oct. 2004. (And see also: "Discovery Institute's 'Wedge project' circulates online".

This is an example of hacking the idea network, to change both it's behavior and its content.

jd

And related to the write-up just posted on the west coast dock situation two years ago (should be just below), the Wall Street Journal carried a news story by Margot Cohen last week (9/22/04) "Wave of the Future: China, Vietnam Supplant Philippines as Port of Call For Finding Low-Cost Crews". In the previous post I referred to a talk by Edna Bonacich that included info about the nature of sailor labor. This article brings that aspect of global transportation up-to-date.

"The shipping industry is searching the world for new sources of seafarers. Pressured to cut costs and boost competitiveness, shipowners are looking for ordinary seamen -- known as 'ratings' -- who are willing to work for lower salaries and endure tougher conditions than their current crews are. That search is taking owners everywhere from China, Vietnam and Myanmar to Latvia, Georgia and Ukraine."

"About a third of seamen come from just one nation: the Philippines. Thanks, in part, to their superior English and compatibility with other nationalities on board, Philippine seamen have come to dominate this labor market over the past 15 years. But over the years, the Filipinos' unions have secured pay raises for their members that shipowners find increasingly burdensome."

[So what was once low cost labor supplier (in this case the Phillippines) becomes even too expensive (we're talking $1100 - 1500 per month, including overtime and benefits), and so the search is on for even cheaper labor. However, the situation is more complex than just finding workers with modern sailing skills. Language is important -- English is the esperanto of the shipping industry so sailors without that skill are at a disadvantage. And also, given crews of mixed countries of origin, the ability to culturally mix is important too. The nature of the labor requires cooperation at the point of production (or transportation as the case may be).]

"And so, once again, owners are searching for new crews, just as they have done many times in the past: In the 1970s, European ratings were largely replaced by Indians who were, in turn, displaced by Filipinos in the 1980s. In the early 1990s, the collapse of the Iron Curtain left the global shipping industry flush with well-trained and experienced seamen from Eastern Europe, who now account for about 25% of ratings. Now, as their own economies improve, the pickings are getting slimmer."


[An index of the swath cut by globalization...]

So here is an aspect of the network of globalization -- the links expressed by the shipping industry, and within that link, the detail of the workers, and the network of their relations to each other.

jd

The following is a column I wrote a couple of years ago as a strike was looming on the West Coast docks in the U.S. The world economy, as a network, is connected in many ways, not the least of which is the transportation system which moves goods from producer to market; or market to consumer. The digital transport system is a part of this (i.e., the Internet and other digital communication systems). Older forms are still key components also, for moving about those things which cannot be digitally rendered.

A West Coast longshore workers strike is looking likely. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which represents the dock workers and clerks at the ports from Long Beach to Seattle, is stuck in contract talks with the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), which represents the major shipping lines, over who's going to pay what for health care benefits.

All that stuff on the shelves at Walmart and Target -- big surprise -- is made across the big water in the sweatshops of Asia. Somehow it has to get to Walmart and Target. In the global economy, the transportation section of the economy -- shipping, trucking, warehousing, railroads -- plays a key role. It's relatively easy to move a factory from Chicago or Buffalo to Mexico or Indonesia; it's hard to move 280 million consumers. So the big retailers are stuck having to deal with transportation workers.

Shipping, like every other part of the economy, has been undergoing a technology revolution; and, as a result, an upheaval in the way it is organized and run. The big modern container ships are so big that they can't get through the Panama Canal. Which means goods destined for the U.S. must pass through the west coast docks. The west coast ports, and especially the ports of Los Angeles, are the gateways to the malls of America.

A lot is at stake. According to Edna Bonacich, a researcher at the University of California - Riverside, a one week strike on the west coast docks would cost American business $5 billion. A two-week strike would cost them $20 billion. Modern manufacturing relies on "just-in-time" production; modern retailing relies on "just-in-time" goods. That is, there aren't lots and lots of computer chips or shoes sitting in warehouses -- the factories and stores count on a smoothly flowing distribution pipeline to keep the assembly line and shelves primed. An interruption of more than just a few days quickly disrupts the global assembly line.

September 11 provided the cover for a big advance in the building a police state begun under Clinton and U.S. administrations before him. Now just about anything that threatens the interest of capitalism is being passed off as a security threat. In the inside-out logic of the Bush regime, a humming U.S. economy needs working docks, therefore a longshore strike would be a security threat. As would any effort by workers and people without to defend their rights or secure basics like housing, food, health care, etc. The Bush administration is considering its options. These include the invoking a range of laws to break a strike, up to and including using the U.S. Navy to work the docks -- a wartime measure, but, after all, we are in a war against terror.

Beyond the current looming strike, the march of technology proceeds apace. The shipping companies and the giant retailers who pull their strings want deregulated, strike-free, smooth-running ports. Like the Liverpool "dockers" and the Australian "dockers" before them, the workers of the ILWU stand in the way. The ILWU faces a future of automated docks. But blocking new technology that relieves people of dangerous, dull or dirty work is no answer. The problem is an economic system that blocks new technology from being used for the benefit of all, and instead uses new technology to terrorize people with a future of poverty.

The west coast dock situation demands that we defend what the ILWU has won. It also demands that we fight not just against each new brick of the police state, but for a new economy free of the terror of poverty. The whole situation points to a need for a political party to represent our class -- like the Labor Party.

Jim Davis
8/24/02

Additional information on the west coast dock situation

David Bacon, "Bush Threatens Dockers' Right To Strike"

International Longshore and Warehouse Union

Pacific Maritime Association
(This is the trade association that represents the shippers)

West Coast Waterfront Coalition

(This is the association of shipping customers whose businesses depend on the steady flow of goods through the ports. Its members include Gap, Home Depot, Target, Walmart, etc.)

In a talk at a globalization conference in Chicago last May [2002], Edna Bonacich, a researcher at the University of California - Riverside, described the trans-Pacific shipping industry. The next bit is from notes I took at the conference -- jd
In the drive to cut costs, much of the transportation sector has been de-regulated. Most shipping lines register their ships under "flags of convenience", like Panama or Liberia, where enforcing maritime laws is difficult. The boats are basically floating sweatshops. The use of standard-sized containers going back to the 1960s (pioneered, by the way, by the U.S. Navy to make it easier to move stuff in wartime), coupled with advanced computer and imaging technology, have led to largely automated docks (which is actually the case in the Rotterdam port in Holland). Boats can be unloaded so fast that shore leave for the handful of predominantly Filipino or Chinese sailors is a thing of the past, making them virtual prisoners on the boats for months at a time. In the most important port of L.A., the goods are loaded onto trucks driven by "independent contractors" -- code words for low paid, high-stressed, often undocumented workers, "sweatshops on wheels" -- and hauled up I-10 to the giant warehouse complexes of the Inland Empire. There, the goods are sorted by close-to-minimum wage workers for trucks or rail destined to the Walmarts and Targets of the heartland. And there still are a lot of factories in the U.S. that depends on parts and materials from Asia. In the middle, are the relative handful of unionized, well-paid ILWU workers running the cranes and processing the paperwork at the docks.

I'm reading James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds, which is a generally useful addition to the broad genre of popular treatments of complexity, emergence, networks and the like. His particular focus is on the decision-making process, as opposed to the emergence of order in systems as discussed in Steven Johnson's Emergence. Setting aside the rather bizarre conception of "rational behavior" as narrow self-interest that provides the straw man for many of his observations about social behavior, there is much of interest for anyone involved in committees, collectives, organizations, etc.

One of the general challenges of the "network form" is how to ensure that the organization maintains some coherence and common purpose via a decentralized structure. Surowiecki addresses this question in chapter 4 of his book.

Decentralization's great strength is that it encourages independence and specialization on the one hand while still allowing people to coordinate their activities and solve difficult problems on the other. Decentralization's great weakness is that there's no guarantee that valuable information which is uncovered in one part of the the system will find its way through the rest of the system. Sometimes valuable information never gets disseminated, making it less useful that it otherwise would be. What you;d like is a way for individuals to specialize and to acquire local knowledge -- which increases the total amount of information available in the system -- while also being able to aggregate that local knowledge and private information into a collective whole. (p 71-2)

That is, the problem is not "decentralization" per se, but data aggregation in the system (that is, in the network). "[A] decentralized system can only produce generally intelligent results if there's a means of aggregating the information of everyone in the system." (74)

"Information aggregation" is a network function in that the structure of the network -- the efficiency of the links, the degree of filtering or friction or consolidation at the nodes -- determines how well information is aggregated. If links are missing, or nodes collect but do not forward information, aggregation will suffer.

"Aggregation -- which could be seen as a curious form of centralization -- is therefore paradoxically important to the success of decentralization". (75) The "centralization" is really the "collectivization" of information, transforming it from local to global information. "It's possible and desirable, to have collective decisions made by decentralized agents."

Decentralization is hard, and teeters on the edge of disorganization. The crucial difference is the integrity of the network in keeping the nodes in contact, and providing the mechanism for information aggregration.

Citing the Iraq army during the 2003 Iraq war, the destruction of the Iraqi command and control system left pockets of resistance -- "all tactics and no strategy" per one British commander. The U.S. Army, on the other hand, is cited as the "true decentralized military" in that war. Individual units were given wide latitude for decision-making, but maintained a functioning communication system that allowed the local experience/information to be shared, aggregated and become collective information.

The chain of command remains essential to the way the military works, and all battlefield action takes place within a framework defined by what's known as the Commander's Intent, which essentially lays out a campaign's objectives. But increasingly, successul campaigns may depend as much on the fast aggregation of information from the field as on preexisting, top-down strategies. (p 77)

jd

Another quote from Steven Johnson's Emergence book. He is exploring the concept of feedback as critical to emergent systems; both "negative feedback [where the feedback regulates or restrains the system - jd], a way of transforming a complex system into a complex adaptive system." p 139, emphasis in original); and positive feedback, where the output feeds back into the system, building into a whole new effect.

Johnson uses the "mediasphere", the environment of media, as an example of a complex system. Changes in technology, in this case cable television, and the ability of local stations to feed news into the system; and in policy (rules), that allowed local CNN affiliates to feed stories into the system, as a dramatic change that ultimately allowed the Gennifer Flowers story to come to mass-light during the 1992 primary campaigns.

Once again, we return to the fundamental laws of emergence: the behavior of individual agents is less important than the overall system. In earlier times, connections were hierarchical; they lacked the connections to generate true feedback; and too few agents were interacting to create any higher-level order. But the cable explosion of the eighties changed all that. For the first time, the system started to reverberate on its own. The sound was quiet during those initial years and may not have crossed into an audible range until Jim Wooten asked that question. And yet anyone who caught the nightly news on January 24, 1992, picked up its signal loud and clear. (p 145)

And earlier: "The likelihood of a feedback loop correlates directly to the general interconnectedness of the system." (134)

A couple of pages later, Johnson describes the danger of an absence of feedback. While the Gennifer Flowers affair as an example of "runaway positive feedback", "the tyranny of the crank results from a scarcity of feedback: a system where the information flows are unidirectional, where the audience is present and at the same time invisible." (152)

Like living in a sensory deprivation tank -- eventually you begin to hallucinate.

jd

Resources: Open theory

The mechanism being used on the Open Theory web site looks to be an effort to apply the concepts of open source to developing theory ("open theory" or "ot"). "Developing texts like Free Software according to the principle »rough consensus, tasty text!«"

An interesting use of the Internet in collaborative development of political projects...

Although most of the stuff on the site looks to be in German, it also looks like there is nothing to keep any member from starting a project in any language.

jd

"A strong body of psychological research, supported by widespread anecdotal evidence, confirms the hypothesis that direct contact with nature leads to increased mental health and psychological development."

This is the opening sentence from a very useful overview, "Psychological Benefits of Nature Experiences" by John Davis, who teaches at Naropa University and the School of Lost Borders (he is also my brother).

The paper, and the research it summarizes, is relevant to interconnection and networks in several ways:

The notion of the human/nature connection (and in this sense, nature is understood mainly as "unbuilt", or barely touched by human hands -- "wild" or "natural" environments; although John does reference research into benefits of connections as seemingly trivial as those with potted plants or pets -- well nothing trivial about the relationship to pets). Situating the individual in an environment, where the individual is really just a node in a vast network of biological and physical interactions...

But we tend to compress the network down to two nodes, Me and Nature. John points out towards the end of the paper, that that distinction is ultimately false, because, well, aren't we eating, breathing, pissing, shitting, screwing "nature" too?

"[We need] to reconsider the duality of Person and Place. The psychological benefits of nature are usually framed in dualistic terms: nature affects human experience. A transpersonal view questions the assumption of nature (as one thing) affecting human experience (as another thing)? Or could we speak of a more primary category, Being, of which Person and Place are two aspects.

And

In a transpersonal analysis, it is also important that we not confuse nature (as the natural world relatively unaffected by human intervention) and Nature (as spirit or the ultimate ground of being). ... The point is that both human and nature are expressions of the same source, Nature.

(see also John's article "The Transpersonal Dimensions of Ecopsychology: Nature, Nonduality, and Spiritual Practice")

Part of John's work includes taking people out into wilderness areas, so he speaks from personal experience as well as from academic learning. On a trip I did with him a couple of years ago, he explored the range of relationships to Nature: Nature as danger; Nature as resource; Nature as commodity; Nature as ?mirror?; Nature as self (in the sense described above). And in these relationships we can see how broader social and economic contexts come to play -- specifically capitalism as an alienating system that reduces Nature to something to be exploited, consumed, bought and sold, and dumped on. The quality of the connections of humans and nature are determined? (to a great extent anyway) by production relations.

Another aspect of the overview paper that jumped out at me was the role of Nature as a "trigger for peak experiences" and personal transformation (or, in dialectical terms, qualitative changes in the personality or self that take place as leaps). "Survey results on frequency and triggers for peak experiences ... shows that nature is the most common trigger for peak experiences".

If thought of as "ego transcendence" and in terms of "Object Relations Theory": "If the self is a structure integrating the various object relations, going to a radically different environment would tend to destructure or disintegrate this self-structure."

The process of "de-structuring" is another way, I think, of saying that the connections within the network-of-the-self are broken, destroyed. This process of destruction is an integral stage of the leap (qualitative change as the shift from one law system to another, one kind of "necessary connections" to another). The old connections are destroyed and new connections forged.

Here we get to aspects of what makes for qualitative change. The "radically different environment" can be seen as the trigger -- a catalytic agent that kicks off a process that is "waiting to happen", but itself is not changed in the process or even incorporated into the new quality. The source of the new quality (say, self-understanding, or healthy, balanced personality) is not in nature-the-external-environment, but discovered from internal wells, or introduced from the outside (teacher, book, dervish, therapist, collective, etc) in the form of ideas, in an intellectual way, but not really integrated until the transcendent or transforming moment triggered by nature.

Or another way to see this is that Nature, the experience of the unity, "Coherence, Complexity, Legibility, and Mystery" [these are the qualities of "preferred environments" per John's references] of Nature is itself the new quality. Some sort of Nature-integration -- we become Nature-Boy and Nature-Girl.

Classic dialectics views causality as arising from within the phenomena, as the result of interacting contradictions. The classic kind of causation results in what physics would call "phase changes", where "quantity becomes quality". These phase changes are triggered by changes in the environment -- the addition or subtraction of energy, for example, in the case of water, and the presence of catalysts or "occasions". ["Nature" or the wilderness setting would be the "environment", and some event in the wilderness -- the appearance of an animal, a strong wind, an eclipse, etc the "occasion" or catalyst. Or other mechanisms might be at work that allow for the trigger effect -- John's paper surveys these. For more on the use of the term "occasion", see my piece "Networks and Interconnection".]

But I think we also have to allow for special kinds of causation that involves the introduction of a new quality into a process, generally of a spontaneous or relatively random character, not predictable, but expected. This kind of causation leads to another kind of qualitative change, a much more profound change: the overthrow of one law system, one type of connections; and its replacement with a new law system, new types of connections.

The "new" quality, in this latter sense of becoming Nature-Boy/Nature-Girl isn't Nature per se, because, as noted, we already are "Nature." It's more of a sense that "we got to get ourselves back to the garden"; a re-realization; a lost, or misplaced quality re-discovered; or given back, given again by being in wild places; but now understood in a more profound, higher, deeper, complete, complex way.


jd

As technology (in particular, the Internet) allows new kinds of connections to develop, old network forms are challenged.

An 7/7/04 item from Internet Week, "Peer-To-Peer Gambling Coming Soon To America" describes the rise of a new form of online gambling that bypasses the "house" altogether. See the "house" (the casino, which literally, Italian diminutive for "house") as the centralized node via which individual gamblers can find a game; or punters can assemble the parimutuel pool. In the past this would be the brick and mortar facility, although with the Internet, the gambling space has become quite virtual. This scheme goes one step further, to remove even the virtual house -- you can become the bookie.

"It's like Kazaa or Morpheus, but for betting", per the BetBug website. If I understand the way this works, the individual bettor offers odds on some event, and escrows the money in an account; any takers also park money in an account (in a Cyprus-based bank). So the website is the vehicle for connecting bettor to bettor, rather that bettor to house, and through the house to other bettors. BetBug scrapes 5% from the winning account for the service.

According to the Internet Week article:

Unlike Web casinos, bettors using peer-to-peer services don't wager against the house, but rather against each other. The online betting services allow users to set their own terms. This shift in risk from more traditional casinos to individual users poses a threat to established online gambling sites. A market that some analysts estimate generates $8 billion per year.

While online wagering is technically illegal in the U.S., BetBug is arguing that this is legal, because the betting takes place between two individuals, like you betting with your neighbor whose garage will collapse first. With no "middlemen" -- i.e., the bookie or the house -- the U.S. Wire Act (the legal basis for outlawing online gaming)is not violated. Or so they argue.

Here's a link to a more comprehensive New York Times article on the same: "Gambling Sites Offering Ways to Let Any User Be the Bookie".

What is clear is that the Internet is changing how gambling is conducted, just as it has changed auctions, securities day-trading and music sales.

While Web casinos are not new, a new generation of online services like Betfair has emerged to allow sports bettors to wager not against the house but directly against each other. The services, by letting individuals set the terms of their own wager easily and efficiently, threaten to diminish the role of more traditional casinos, which set the odds of a contest and then assume the risk for paying a winning bet.