Network is hard #

We’ve started with the internet #

All the issues that we have with the internet are the issues inherent in network information architectures. Information is manageable by individuals to a certain scale. Network is far, far larger than that scale. 

To further complicate it, it is individuals who maintain the information, just like the internet today. The complication isn’t with coherence (we do not need a Big Brother application to change all the information at once — it will delete nascent ideas and understandings as non-compliant), but with the who-ness of people.

People manage information according to their own who-ness. Some will depend on data, some will trust emotion first, some will be a reflection of their environment — including the flip sides of abuse, denigration, brainwashing, misinformation, stability points, indoctrination emphasized by acceptance and respect, etc. All of them will be depending on their processing chain, over and over and over again.

Even people getting into groups and managing information by consortium are processing according to who-ness. Wikipedia, that public-open and editable repository of information, has cognitive biases when you dig into individual pages. 

The fact that we have and maintain a network of information larger than what we can individually encompass — however chaotic — nods directly to our ability to collaborate and the intrinsic survivability that collaboration supports. 

It is also in the internet that we can start to see the change-state issues that arise as we shift from hierarchical, one-way architectures to a non-hierarchical, multi-dimensional architecture.

It’s showing us in raw emotion how our cultures are formed. Our predominant cultures, especially in the US, are hierarchical. One pastor/minister/priest/etc. declaims from a pulpit. One president sits in office. One CEO (there are more exceptions here) runs a company. One superintendent manages a school district. Families can be more relaxed, but the pandemic showed us how it’s still considered the woman’s job to manage kids. A stay-at-home father is still an oddity.

Most of our social expectations are firmly rooted in hierarchy. The harshest pushback by strangers about family dynamics is often centered around not adhering to the stranger’s expected hierarchy. The harshest cross-cultural excoriations often have expected hierarchies at the foundation.

It doesn’t surprise me. Network is hard. 

People, though, are complicated, complex, and wondrously adaptable. 

Network gets closer to the quality of truth. Network will uncover relevant connectome and implement tools around it faster and more nimbly than hierarchy. Yes, network will make mistakes. So does hierarchy.

We are people. We make mistakes, regardless of everything we do to try to not make mistakes. The people who can’t acknowledge mistakes are dark triad, or are dealing with dark triad in close quarters.

Here’s an uncomfortable acknowledgement, though: the only way to avoid network is to devolve. It’s one of many reasons I think we are information beings. 

We have attained our progress through information, and if we remove information — if we remove skills, and understanding, and allow lies to permeate the fabric of our interactions — we lose ground. We lose technology, lose the understanding we fought so hard for, and civilizations fall. That’s devolving. 

To make hierarchy a functional tool, we have to scale back. We have to fit it to only the relevant at-hand knowledge, scale back our intertwingling nuance, stop pulling together the world across borders, and only focus on the backyard. We would have to make our lives small enough to fit into a reasonable hierarchical architecture in order to make that architecture work as the only point of view. We’re talking about a few square miles, maybe tens of miles, of geographic area; small enough that we don’t have to understand that deserts exist, just that the creek is over that way. And we have to curtail dealing with too many people, because people very quickly stop fitting into a hierarchical architecture’s ability to make sense.

The inevitability and necessity of network involves our cultures and our information and understanding, and how we fit into the environment. People adhering to a culture that culls what doesn’t fit doesn’t stop with other people. It culls everything that doesn’t fit, including uncomfortable understanding. It decides that water-rich habits are the only solution, and apply those as standards even in a desert. 

That doesn’t mean there’s not a place for hierarchical architectures. Consider the implications of the infinite variability of information as implied by the practical introduction. Ultimately, hierarchy will remain a useful window into networked information. 

Hierarchy just doesn’t work to run the overall architecture. It malfunctions quickly, and often dramatically.