blog (January, 2008)
nexus, social connection
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:
- the means of connection
- the core of a connective network, and
- the part that provides that means.
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.
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.
self-arranging, explodable echo chambers
A jarring reminder to diversify social connections and information sources, Adam's quote from The Polarization of Extremes relates how the internet aids in the "the creation of enclaves of like-minded people," making groups more homogeneous, and "squelching diversity."
But that function is only part of the story, and, really, a feature, [not a bug,] if viewed in context of longer and larger processes. The web is the frameworks for -- and accelerator of -- constant connection, explosion and re-arranging of minds and ideas.
Individual talents and perspectives don't have to shrivel within a retribalized society; they merely interact within a group consciousness that has the potential for releasing far more creativity than the old atomized culture. Literate man is alienated, impoverished man; retribalized man can lead a far richer and more fulfilling life--not the life of a mindless drone but of the participant in a seamless web of interdependence and harmony. The implosion of electric technology is transmogrifying literate, fragmented man into a complex and depth-structured human being with a deep emotional awareness of his complete interdependence with all of humanity. The old "individualistic" print society was one where the individual was "free" only to be alienated and dissociated, a rootless outsider bereft of tribal dreams; our new electronic environment compels commitment and participation, and fulfills man's psychic and social needs at profound levels.
[...]
the global village makes maximum disagreement and creative dialog inevitable.
-- Marshall McLuhan, The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan (March 1969)
(emphasis mine)
I'll split hairs and suggest that McLuhan was wrong when he said seamless. Separations exist, and are essential for growth within: polarization/contraction provides focus, cooperative motivation; pressure-cook. But the seams are more porous and flexible than in meatspace, due to the web's openness and allowed dynamism in personal identification.
(Build a highly-adaptable, low-bandwidth medium, and all sorts of social norms are discarded because of ease of anonymity. As bandwidth has increased and patterns have been been formalized, anonymity is somewhat less available, but adaptability and fluidity of interaction remain.)
Not that competition ever goes away because everything happens at once all the time. It's a rich situation. But we are learning global harmony.
[...]
Our social models, including our corporate world, were designed as mechanical models. But organism and mechanism are very different [...]
At present we're moving away from inventor-created, allopoietic systems to autopoietic systems -- literally self-created systems, living systems in holarchy instead of hierarchy, with negotiations instead of top-down command; systems that negotiate cooperation and thus design themselves from within instead of being engineered and repaired and redesigned by inventors or designers.
-- Elisabet Sahtouris, Living Systems, the Internet and the Human Future (May, 2000)
Paul Hawken gave examples and a very nice metaphor for this phenom in his Blessed Unrest SALT talk, (mp3 | summary.) ... Don't sweat global: think local and act local, and more appropriate large-scale results will emerge as aggregate.
(Last-quoted) Sahtouris is speaking on March 1st at River's Edge in Rocky River. Jenita calls her my new guru secret crush but got me a ticket for the workshop anyway.
The last time we were at River's Edge the audience was largely composed of the Sisters of St. Joseph from the congregation next door... I'm happily certain this won't just be an echo chamber for my pre-conceptions.