Verbatim » connectedness & separateness

the strength of weak ties

Shanta Rohse — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 22:51:07 +0000

Because one’s acquaintances are less likely linked than one’s close friends, they connect individuals to other social circles, providing a vital resource for such tasks as finding jobs. Cliques are bridged by weak ties, which are therefore crucial for transmission of information and for social cohesion.

Mark Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties, American Journal of Sociology, May 1973.

metcalfe’s law on the value of the network

Shanta Rohse — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 05:48:56 +0000

If you had the only telephone in the world, who would you call? Networks seem to grow more valuable to a user proportionately with the number of other users he or she can call. In a network with N users, each sees a value proportional to the N-1 others, so the total value of the network grows as N*(N-1), or as N squared for large N.

Robert Metcalfe, Metcalfe’s Law: A network becomes more valuable as it reaches more users, From the Ether, Infoworld, October 2, 1995.

…we propose another rough rule, that the value of a network of size n grows like n log(n). This rule, while not meant to be exact, does appear to be consistent with historical behavior of networks with regard to interconnection, and it captures the advantage that general connectivity offers over broadcast networks that deliver content. It also helps explain the failure of the dot-com and telecom ventures, since it implies network effects are not as strong as had been hoped for.

Andrew Odlyzko & Benjamin Tilly, A refutation of Metcalfe’s Law and a better estimate for the value of networks and network interconnections, March 2, 2005.

relationships are all there is

Shanta Rohse — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 02:51:33 +0000

Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals who can go it alone.

Margaret Wheatley, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, 2002, p. 19.

low at my problem bending

Shanta Rohse — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 03:01:20 +0000

LOW at my problem bending,
Another problem comes,
Larger than mine, serener,
Involving statelier sums;
I check my busy pencil,
My ciphers slip away,
Wherefore, my baffled fingers,
Time Eternity?

Emily Dickinson, Part Five: The Single Hound, LXXX, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, 1924; from Bartleby.com

proprioception in the digital age

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 21:39:48 +0000

Proprioception, the perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli inside the body, is a medical concept. Although the name for it is not well known, the phenomemon is familiar to all of us. Our proprioceptors incessantly inform us that we are standing up, inclining our head, squinting our eyes, or clenching our fists. Proprioceptors work as sensory systems not for outside information about others or the environment but inside the body. Nerves attached to muscles fire when they detect motion such as change in positioning of the body. These self-monitoring nerves tell us whether we are standing on our feet or our head or are on the bus at a standstill or jogging along at thirty-five miles an hour. The Earth has enjoyed a proprioceptive system for millennia, since long before humans evolved. Small mammals communicate the comming earthquake or cloudburst. Trees release “volatiles,” substances that warn their neighbors that gypsy moth larvae are attacking their leaves. Proprioception, the sensing of self, probably is as old as self itself. I like to think that we people augment and continue to accelerate Gaia’s newfangled proprioceptor capability. A fire in the Borneo forest and a crash of a U.S. helicopter in the Italian Alps are broadcast on televised news in New York City. Yet extinct packs of wolves and flocks of dinosaurs enjoyed their own proprioceptive social communication; the global nervous system certainly did not begin with the origin of people. Gaia, the physiologically regulated Earth, enjoyed proprioceptive global communication long before people evolved. The air circulated gas emissions and soluble chemical from tropical trees, mating-ready insects, and life-threatened bacteria. Love compounds have wafted in spring breezes since the Archean age. But the speed of proprioception has greatly increased with the electronic age.

Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, 1998, pp. 113-4.

thinking makes it so

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 19:08:04 +0000

Why, then ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.”

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Sc. II; Hamlet’s response to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who question Hamlet’s regard of Denmark as a prison – “We think not so, my lord.” The originator of the postmodern pragmatic viewpoint?

the role of the observer

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 18:21:09 +0000

Everything said is said by someone.

Humberto R. Maturana & Francisco J. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, 1999, p. 26.

Everything is said by someone in the expectation of being understood by someone else. Everything heard as being said is heard being said by someone and calls for a response.

Klaus Krippendorff, Cybernetics Discussion Group, June 14, 1999, adding a relational note.

listening

Shanta Rohse — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 17:28:31 +0000

A young black South African woman taught some of my friends a profound lesson about listening. She was sitting in a circle of women from many nations, and each woman had the chance to tell a story from her life. When her turn came, she began quietly to tell a story of true horror–of how she had found her grandparents slaughtered in their village. Many of the women were Westerners, and in the presence of such pain, they instinctively wanted to do something. They wanted to fix, to make it better, anything to remove the pain of this tragedy from such a young life. The young woman felt their compassion, but also felt them closing in. She put her hands up, as if to push back their desire to help. She said: “I don’t need you to fix me. I just need you to listen to me.”

Margaret J. Wheatley, Finding Our Way: Leadership For an Uncertain Time, 2005, explaining that listening creates relationships

connected by conscience

Shanta Rohse — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 02:44:27 +0000

Conscience is a creator of meaning. As a sense of constraint rooted in our emotional ties to one another, it prevents life from devolving into nothing but a long and essentially boring game of attempted dominance over our fellow human beings, and for every limitation conscience imposes on us, it gives us a moment of connectedness with an other, a bridge to someone or something outside of our often meaningless schemes.

Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us, 2005