nexus, social connection

Mar 25, 2008 - 11:14
Categories: social

nexus is defined as both a means of connection as well as the core or center. Biologically speaking, it's a specialized area of the cell membrane involved in intercellular communication and adhesion.

So we've interwoven:

Nexus comes from the Latin nectere, to bind, (not to be confused with nectar, which is the Latin drink of the gods, but from the Greek for death (think necro.))

Now we have a new definition. Nexus (n): a tool for visualizing your social connections. (Found via information aesthetics: facebook social network graph.) Install the Nexus Facebook app, and it generates a semi-interactive graph of all of your friends and how they're connected. Mouse over a friend-node, and all of her or his friends on your graph are highlighted.

Here's my full Nexus graph. It helped me find out that Ilya knows Greg, and that Melvin is the only link (besides me) between my college and high school networks, making him my nexus, (like core, not like connective tissue.) Or maybe it makes him my nemesis (from *nem-, as in to divide, also, nomad.) Or maybe it just makes him a good bridge.

I've said before, there's a ton of potentially interesting data here -- who's connected to whom -- free for the mining. (Is Valdis watching?)

But ... means and membranes ... What are the means of personal connections? Business, love, work: are these just platforms, and communication the only means of direct connection? (Is that a cop-out and re-definition?)

The comment box at the bottom of this post is also a means, (means: instrument or agency.)

Show me your membrane.

comments

i have no membrane.

"i am alone, i am not lonely" (Heat, 1995)

i'm not even sure what to do with all this information.

through this nexus of INFORMation, am i supposed to FEEL more connected?

the ever growing pursuit of my brain tryin' to figure out what does this all mean????

oh! and you better believe THEY are watching. just gotta figure out who THEY are. it's already proven that THEY know how to use this information in forms of marketing. but is that all this information is good for??? consumer generated pop-up ads?

do i REALLY want to know that much about people? i mean i already know people that feel because i have a cell phone that i should be able to CONNECT to them when THEY want me to be.

now with this and the advent of Web 2.0 (have you done a blog on this yet jeff?)
i mean, are we really doing anything new? or just putting some fresh words with pretty graphics to cover up shit that's already been done?

not sure if people have seen this video. came out a while ago, but i thought it would go nicely with this conversation:
Google Take Over

watch fo' da hook!
drB

-- dr.B (March 27, 2008 7:01 PM)

You can feel anything you want.

It feels interesting to me, so I guess it's more of an intellectual exercise in relationships, and probably only widening connections, not deepening.

Whether you want to pay attention is also up to you, but I think that if we want to keep the they at bay, we should ensure to maintain the same abilities as them.

As for mentions of web 2.0:

I think the term got very diluted, overused, and confused, as buzz does.

-- jeffschuler (March 30, 2008 3:30 PM)

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