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Networks
At any given moment in any population of human
beings, there will be individuals who have
reached different stages in the
developmental sequence. Each will possess a certain store of
data and will consequently emit behaviors,
which stimulate others who have reached a stage
appropriate to respond to them.
The product of interaction between such individuals will be
certain typical relationships or attachments.
This nOde
last updated September 19th, 2004 and is permanently morphing...
(5 Chicchan (Serpent) / 8
Ch'en (Black) - 5/260 - 12.19.11.11.5)

network
network, in computing, two or more
computers connected for the purposed of exchanging messages and sharing data
and system resources. A LOCAL AREA NETWORK (LAN) connects personal computers
and workstations (each called a node) over dedicated, private communications
links. A wide area network (WAN) connects large numbers of nodes over long-distance
communications links, such as common carrier
telephone
lines. An internet is a connection between networks.
The
Internet is a WAN that connects thousands of disparate networks in the U.S.,
Canada, Europe, and Asia, providing global communication between nodes on government,
educational, and industrial networks.
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network
network (nèt´wûrk´)
noun
1. An openwork fabric or
structure in which cords, threads, or wires cross at regular intervals.
2. Something resembling
an openwork fabric or structure in form or concept, especially: a. A system
of lines or channels that cross or interconnect: a network of railroads.
b. A complex, interconnected group or system: an espionage network. c.
An extended group of people with similar interests or concerns who interact
and remain in informal contact for mutual assistance or support.
3. a. A chain of radio or
television broadcasting stations linked by
wire
or microwave relay. b. A company that produces the programs for these stations.
4. a. A group or system
of
electric
components and connecting circuitry designed to function in a specific
manner. b. Computer Science. A system of computers interconnected by telephone
wires or other means in order to share
information.
Also called net.
verb
networked, networking, networks verb, transitive
1. To cover with or as if with an openwork fabric
or structure.
2. To broadcast over a radio or television network.
3. Computer Science. To connect (computers) into
a network.
verb, intransitive
To interact or engage in informal communication
with others for mutual assistance or support.
- net´work´er noun
network, the /n./
1. The union of all the major
noncommercial, academic, and
hacker-oriented
networks, such as Internet, the pre-1990
ARPANET,
NSFnet, BITNET, and the virtual UUCP and
Usenet
"networks", plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial time-sharing
services (such as CompuServe, GEnie and AOL) that gateway to them. A site
is generally considered "on the network" if it can be reached through some
combination of Internet-style (
@-sign)
and UUCP (bang-path) addresses. See Internet, bang path, Internet address,
network address. Following the mass-culture discovery of the Internet in
1994 and subsequent proliferation of cheap TCP/IP connections, "the network"
is increasingly synonymous with the Internet itself (as it was before the
second
wave
of wide-area computer
networking
began around
1980).
2. A fictional
conspiracy
of libertarian hacker-subversives and anti-authoritarian monkeywrenchers
described in
Robert
Anton Wilson's novel
_Schrödinger's
Cat_, to which many hackers have subsequently decided they belong (this
is an example of ha ha only serious).
In sense 1, `network' is often abbreviated to `net'. "Are you on the net?" is a frequent question when hackers first meet face to face, and "See you on the net!" is a frequent goodbye.
- from _The New Hacker's
Dictionary_ by
Eric
S. Raymond
"Because networks of communication
may generate
feedback
loops, they may acquire the ability to regulate
themselves. For example, a community that
maintains an active network of communication will learn
from its mistakes, because the consequences of a mistake will spread
through the network and
return
to the source along feedback
loops.
Thus the community can correct its mistakes, regulate itself,and organize itself.
Indeed, self-organization has emerged as perhaps 'the'
central concept in the systems view of life, and like the concepts
of feedback and self-regulation, it is linked closely to networks.
The pattern of life, we might say, is a network pattern capable
of self-organization. This is a simple definition, yet it is
based on recent discoveries at the very forefront of science."
-
Fritjof
Capra - _The Web of Life_
"...what is happening is a tendency
toward what I call turning the body inside out. Through our media and
cybernetics, we are actually approaching the point where consciousness can be
experienced in a state of disconnection from the body. We have changed.
We are no longer bipedal monkeys. We are instead a kind of
cybernetic
coral reef of organic components and inorganic technological components.
We have become a
force
that takes unorganized raw material and excretes technical objects; we have
transcended the normal definitions of humans. We are like an enormous
collective organism with our data banks, our forecasting agencies, and our computer
networks, and the many levels at which we are connected into the universe.
Our self-image is changing; the monkey has been all but left behind and, shortly,
will be left behind."
-
Terence
Mckenna -
_Archaic
Revival_
The path is a plateau.
"For the ngHolos, the notion of
a spiritual "path" is a misnomer, for spiritual reality is an endlessly proliferating
manifold. The path is a network of paths, a plateau. One can not "follow" a
network, but must constantly probe it. Each footprint is a node, which constantly
re-produces a number of possible directions. Arrival and departure are fused.
As such,
immediate
and fragmentary spiritual tactics (including these slogans) are prized more
than grand strategic methods which attempt to lay out a well-organized hierarchy
of stages towards gnosis. Many Virtual Masters achieved fame not for their diligence
in pursuing one of the ngHolo's countless philosophical cults, but for the specific
topology of the plateaus they created as they moved through different and frequently
antagonistic fields of thought and experience. " -
selections from the notebooks of Lance Daybreak, curated by Erik Davis in _Shards
Of The Diamond
Matrix_
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"In the old days, evil things spead
rapidly, but now good things spread rapidly. If
you understand...everything begins to appear wonderful and beautiful,
and it naturally makes people stop wasting or stop desiring unnecessary
things. This awakening is contagious and it will be transmitted
to everybody soon." - Tamo-san
"Like the Irish King Cuchulain who
fought the tide with his sword, they lose who would battle
waves
on the shores of
light.
The book is slow, the network is quick; the book is many of one, the network
is many ones multiplied; the book is dialogic, the network polylogic."
- Michael Joyce
The view of living systems as networks
provides a novel perspective on the so-called
hierarchies of nature. Since living systems
at all levels are networks, we must visualize the
web of life as living systems (networks) interacting in network
fashion with other systems (networks). For example, we
can picture an ecosystem schematically as a network with a few
nodes. Each node represents an organism, which means that each
node, when magnified, appears itself as a network. Each
node
in the new network may represent an organ, which in turnwill appear as a
network when magnified, and so on.
In other words, the web of
life consists of networks within networks.
At each scale, under closer scrutiny, the nodes of the
network reveal themselves as smaller networks. We tend to arrange
these systems, all nesting within larger systems, in a hierarchical
scheme by placing the larger systems above the smaller
ones in
pyramid
fashion. But this is a human projection.
In nature there is no "above"
or "below," and there are no hierarchies.
There are only networks nesting within other networks."
-
Fritjof
Capra, _The Web of Life_
"In the province of connected minds, what the network believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the network's mind there are no limits."
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There may exist a vast communication network in
the topological nature of things. A network that becomes a fact only for
those species or individuals who will but have the intelligence enough
to seek this vision. It will by them be found to be persistent in the nature
of things.
Alchemy
thrives in a climate of such ideas. To validate the idea of the worth of
the visions of worlds at a distance one must emerge with some idea spawned
by the visionary Other but with a utility in the here and now. The
wave
quantification of the
I
Ching is the only idea of this sort that I personally have glimpsed
in completeness. It took years to elaborate and its relation to the here
and now is still elusive. Fragmentary themes abound:
symbiosis,
saucer-
lens
vehicles whose possessors navigate the higher topological oceans in our
heads. All this could be transference and fantasy. In the classical sense
of the word the experimenter with
hallucinogens
pursues gnosis: privileged knowledge concerning nature and vouchsafed by
her in
ecstacy.The
history of consciousness is the halting exploration of the once irrational
images and
processes
met in
dreams
and
trance.
Such images become concepts and discoveries as
information
flows through the multiple-continuum of being seeking equilibrium, yet
paradoxically carrying everywhere images of ways the
flow
towards entropy was locally reversed by this being or that society or
phenomenon. We are immersed in a
holographic
ocean of places and ideas. We can understand this to whatever depth we
are able. The ocean of images and the intricacy of their connections is
infinite.
-
Terence
McKenna - _Open Ending_
A dynamic network is one of the
few structures that incorporates the
dimension
of
time.
It honors internal change. We should expect to see networks wherever we see
constant irregular change, and we do.
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A distributed, decentralized
network is more a
processthan
a thing. In the logic of the
Net
there is a shift from nouns to verbs. Economists now reckon that commercial
products are best treated as though they were services. It's not what you
sell a customer, its what you do for them. It's not what something is,
it's what it is connected to, what it does. Flows become more important
than resources. Behavior counts.
Kevin Kelly -
_Out
Of Control_ (1994)
Any network has two ingredients:
nodes
and connections. In the grand network we are now assembling, the size of
the nodes is collapsing while the quantity and quality of the connections
are exploding. These two physical realms, the collapsing microcosm of
silicon
and the exploding telecosm of connections, form the
matrix
through which the new economy of ideas flows.
[...]
A network is like a country
in that it is a web of relationships regulated by standards. In a country
citizens pay taxes and adhere to laws for the benefit of all. In a network,
netizens feed the web first for the benefit of all. The network economy
is a meta-country. Its web of relationships differ from those of a country
in three ways:
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[...]
In both country and network,
the surest route to raising one’s own prosperity is raising the system’s
prosperity. The one clear effect of the industrial age is that the prosperity
individuals achieve is more closely related to their nation’s prosperity
than to their own efforts. Lester Thurow, an
MIT
economist, has pointed out that enabling the lowest paid to earn more is
the best way to raise wages for the highest paid—the theory being that
a rising tide lifts all boats. The network economy will only amplify this.
-
Kevin
Kelly - _New Rules For The New Economy_

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"The networked
imagination
penetrates the mind differently: it works on the connections between minds,
and not on the contents of the imagination of private minds. A certain order
of synaptic connections, established both by how we use a medium like a computer
or an access on-line, and by what we are invited to do with these activities,
establishes itself as a norm for our behaviour and our judgement. Connectivity
becomes a way of life. We develop network minds."
- Derrick DeKerckhove
So are we condemned to the frozen
pessimism of too-late capitalist critique? I don't believe so. Far from dampening
the powers of emergence, the supposed reign of the simulacrum has simply introduced
new
dimensions
into the fabric of space-
time.
The
black
hole is not A chaos; it has structure and pattern. Today is also a time
of intertwining, where elements of the
real
link and draw together, while patterns of resemblance echo across scale and
milieu. Implosion shifts the center, evacuates substance, but does not destroy
the productive possibilities of organization and design. Implosion is not just
collapse; alongside it, or perhaps identified with it, there is recombination.
So everywhere you turn you find networks of linkages, proliferating between
domains previously estranged: philosophy,
photons,
market indexes,
prana,
microfibers, neurotransmitters, quanta, beats. These linkages suggest invisible
exchanges, points of
resonance,
shared unfoldings that draw the mind into the heart of the matter, bringing
it all back home.
- Erik Davis - _Anchors Aweigh!_
"There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts." - George Matthew Adams
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Perhaps it is a matter of loving the network
through ritual at the junction of
perceptual
and world, spaces and affective or cognitive fields. John Scannell has remarked
in M/C that ‘graffiti writers love the city more than you ever will’.
Perhaps likewise, there are those –
hackers,
war-chalkers, technopagans,
utopians,
perceptual experimentalists, the new techno-neurotics or even just everyday
networkers - that love the network with all the difficulties and complexity
that love implies. For them, the network is not just an
information
or communications conduit, but a partner in ritual becoming.
- Andrew Murphie - _When Fibre Meets Fibre – Networking As Ritual Meeting Of Body, Brain & Technics
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The term Network has a number of different meanings, including
* A system to deliver programs to multiple broadcast
stations is called a television network or a radio network depending (obviously)
on whether the programs are for Television or Radio, respectively.
* When people meet with each other either for socializing or for assistance,
the practice is sometimes referred to as Networking. Informal meetings of people
are sometimes referred to as the Old Boy Network.
* _Network_ (vhs/nstc)
(1976)
is also an Academy Award-winning film.
A wide variety of systems of interconnected components are called networks. Specific examples include:
* transport networks,
o roads,
o railroads,
o shipping routes and
o airlines,
o pipelines (gas, petroleum, water, sewage),
* electric circuits - a network of electrical components.
*
electricity
networks (electric power - generation,
transmission
and distribution.)
* social and/or business networks. (studied in, say, sociology)
o criminal networks
* telecommunications networks
o computer networks, which transfer
information
between computers. (Specific configurations include star networks and grid networks.)
The
Internet
is a large-scale computer network. Also, a website and the whole World Wide
Web are networks of webpages, a link web.
o public switched
telephone
networks, which route audio signals from one telephone to another
o radio networks, which create and distribute radio programming
o television networks, which create and distribute television programming
o financial networks.
* network externality in economics
General-purpose mathematical models of network structures and associated algorithms have been developed in graph theory.
Networks can be characterized in a number of different
ways. For example, many networks are Scale-free networks, in which a few network
nodes
act as "very connected" hubs.
Further Reading
* By network scientists:
1. Linked: The New Science of Networks, Albert-Laszlo
Barabasi, Perseus Publishing, 2002. Hardcover Textbook. ISBN 0738206679.
2.
Nexus:
Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, Mark Buchanan, W. W.
Norton, 2002, hardcover, 256 pages, ISBN 0393041530
3. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, Duncan J. Watts, W. W. Norton,
February, 2003, Hardcover: 448 pages. ISBN 0393041425
* Consumer studies using network theory:
1. Tipping Point: How Little things Can Make a Big Difference,
Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown, 2002, trade paperback, 304 pages, ISBN 0316346624
2. Influentials: One American in Ten Tells the Other Nine How to Vote, Where
to Eat, and What to Buy, Edward B. Keller, Jonathan L. Berry, Douglas B. Reeves,
Free Press, 2003, paperback, ISBN 0743227301
3. Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, Alissa Quart, Perseus, 2002,
hardcover, 256 pages, ISBN 0738206644
(bibliography derived from New York Times article, January 25, 2003 "Connect, They Say, Only Connect")