network 'hubs' v. 'hives'

[phil henshaw]

 
Do you know anyone else working on this?  
 
In thinking over what the measure of  'distance'  between nodes in
networks means (the nominally 5 degrees of separation for people and 19
degrees for web pages) it's occurred to me there are two very different
sides of connection.     Natural system networks tend to be
exceptionally well connected *as a whole* , but the trade-off is that
their sub-nets become exceptionally self-centered *as parts*.
Thinking of highly connected nodes as 'hubs' explains how large complex
systems can work as a whole, but thinking of the regions they connect as
'hives' explains how they can retain their independence as parts.
What we seem to have in the scale-free design of natural systems is also
new evidence of how nature operates with lots of  'different worlds'.
One opportunity that presents is a way to find the functional boundaries
of independent system parts topologically.   Not the least benefit would
be to help us discover the correct ways to aggregate our data for other
things.  
 
The information boundaries surrounding self-connected parts of whole
systems also seem to define structural limits for the 'world views' for
things looking out from their insides.    While the system as a whole
may be well connected, those global connections would naturally tend to
be hidden for observers building their own world view from within its
locally well connected parts.    
 
I've been trying to explain my observation that the world views of
people are often exceptionally different, and yet we remain largely
unaware of it, mostly ignore it in conversation, and are relatively
uninterested in the deep communication problem it produces.    I have a
list of other 'good reasons', but if it's a natural consequence of the
scale-free topology of natural system networks, that could explain a lot
about why humans so regularly fail to communicate but think they do.
That our individual understandings of 'the universe' develop in relation
to sub-networks having local information horizons in every direction, it
means every 'hive' looks like the 'whole'.    When real complex systems
also cross-connect many kinds of  local networks at once (environment,
work, family, community, friendships, beliefs, interests, etc.)  it adds
completeness to the natural topological 'illusion'.    Perhaps the very
'independence' of our world views is further evidence of how deeply
embedded in a larger system they are.
 
Does that make sense?
 

Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: [phone]                
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/>    
 
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[Marcus G. Daniels]

phil henshaw wrote:
> Do you know anyone else working on this?
Duncan Watts, http://cdg.columbia.edu/cdg/projects

[Steve Smith]

Phil
>  
> Do you know anyone else working on this?
I have been "noodling" on it for some time.  Nothing published exactly.

>  
>  
> In thinking over what the measure of  'distance'  between nodes in
> networks means (the nominally 5 degrees of separation for people and
> 19 degrees for web pages) it's occurred to me there are two very
> different sides of connection.     Natural system networks tend to be
> exceptionally well connected *as a whole* , but the trade-off is that
> their sub-nets become exceptionally self-centered *as parts*.    
> Thinking of highly connected nodes as 'hubs' explains how large
> complex systems can work as a whole, but thinking of the regions they
> connect as 'hives' explains how they can retain their independence as
> parts.  

I'm not sure how Hubs and Hives connect in your analogy.   Airports are
Hubs and cities are Hives... if I understand your meaning.     I assume
you are describing regional (relative) self-sufficiency with high
internal connectivity (everyone in a small town knows everyone else) vs
intra-regional connections (highway systems or airlines) which have a
very high valency (number of travelers using a given entrance/exit ramp
or airport).

> What we seem to have in the scale-free design of natural systems
> is also new evidence of how nature operates with lots of  'different
> worlds'.
You are referring to the emergence of heirarchy in these systems
(villages eventually connect into networks of villages/widely
distributed rurals cluster to form regional centers/villages?)
>    One opportunity that presents is a way to find the
> functional boundaries of independent system parts topologically.
Yes, this is where I have been noodling mostly.   The form/function
duality.   By noticing the structural decomposition of a "system", one
can maybe identify the subsystems within a system of systems.   I have
observed this on at least two "engineered" systems...   a

The first was a ~5000 node dynamical systems model of 17 infrastructures
built by dozens of individuals separately but with external references
to other infrastructures.    Taken as a whole, the graph of this coupled
dynamical system is a big hairball until one teases things apart a
little more using clever graph layout techniques.   The result in my
case is that the subsystems (not surprisingly) could be identified by
their relatively high intersubsystem connectivity vs their relatively
low intra-subsystem connectivity.

The second is the Gene Ontology.   We used a variation on the same graph
layout tools to cause the highly interconnected nodes to cluster
together and the less intraconnected clusters to separate.

>   Not the least benefit would be to help us discover the correct ways
> to aggregate our data for other things.
By using a modified (general/tunable) spring model, we were able to get
the data to "self-aggregate" in ways that exposed the structure.

Both systems were somewhat engineered (models of infrastructures built
by humans and knowledge map of genetics) but described somewhat more
natural systems (the union of all infrastructures recognized in 1st
world human cultures, and the various genes responsible for
important/common function in all studied life).
>  
> The information boundaries surrounding self-connected parts of whole
> systems also seem to define structural limits for the 'world views'
> for things looking out from their insides.
I'm not sure I know what you mean by "structural limits"... in the case
of geospatial distributions of humans, the literal spatial separation
between "villages" or "cities" tends to attenuate awareness of the
"things" on the other end of the connection.   Illustrating (or
contradicting that), Santa Fe has(Had) roads named "old pecos trail",
"taos highway", "cerillos road" which were descriptive of the community
in which you would find yourself eventually if you took that road.

Am I understanding (or illuminating or confounding) your point?
>     While the system as a whole may be well connected, those global
> connections would naturally tend to be hidden for observers building
> their own world view from within its locally well connected parts.  
Like I buy a bag of salad at the produce dept of my local grocery,
hardly thinking about the distribution warehouse (maybe) in Albuquerque
where trucks from TX, MX, CA, AZ arrive with all sorts of produce, sort
it out, bring it to the back door of my market, etc... ?   W
>  
> I've been trying to explain my observation that the world views of
> people are often exceptionally different, and yet we remain largely
> unaware of it, mostly ignore it in conversation, and are relatively
> uninterested in the deep communication problem it produces.
In this, I hear you saying that people partition the graph of their life
differently?  That in the above-described method of aggregation, we use
different edge parameters to aggregate what we consider to be part of
our "hive" and what is only accessible through another hub?   My parents
use their computer/internet as a "hub"while many of us here use it as a
"hive"?   One person's metric of distance might be "how long does it
take me to get there?" while another's might be "how much does it cost
me in $$ to get there?" while another might consider "how far is that as
the proverbial crow flies?",  and another "how much irritation will I go
through on the way there?"   The shift from 55 to 70+ freeway speeds
made me newly aware of this... instead of driving to Denver on the back
roads (at an easy 60-65 mph) vs the freeway at similar speeds, it is now
more efficient in time to drive the (longer) freeway at 75-80 vs the
back roads at 60-65 still.   The back roads afford better scenery and
more entertaining places to stop... but the freeway affords the use of
cruise-control and regularly provided stops with name-brand eateries.  
Which is "closer"?
>     I have a list of other 'good reasons', but if it's a natural
> consequence of the scale-free topology of natural system
> networks, that could explain a lot about why humans so regularly fail
> to communicate but think they do.
I'm still missing something here I think.
>   That our individual understandings of 'the universe' develop in
> relation to sub-networks having local information horizons in every
> direction, it means every 'hive' looks like the 'whole'.
I do think I know what you are describing here, that the natural scale
of human perception, when used as a theshold to the scale-free networks
of relations they inhabit, yield a set of "separate worlds"...

Are you also noticing that different people have different qualitative
perceptions (value systems) can live in different worlds whilst sharing
the same space (physical and logical)?  This is what I want to attribute
to self-organized graph layout using different parameters of the edges.
>   When real complex systems also cross-connect many kinds of  local
> networks at once (environment, work, family, community, friendships,
> beliefs, interests, etc.)  it adds completeness to the natural
> topological 'illusion'.
Can you rephrase what you mean by "topological 'illusion'"?  I think I'm
"in the same universe" as you on this but naturally not completely.
>    Perhaps the very 'independence' of our world views is further
> evidence of how deeply embedded in a larger system they are.
Perhaps.   Quantitatively large as well as qualitatively.   Not just
large graphs of graphs, but multi-graphs wherein the power-law of
valency varies over the "type" of edge being considered.   Everyone is
one-degree of separation apart by this e-mail list, but more like 2 or
even 3 by personal connection.   I have never met you  and perhaps of
the other FRIAMers I have met, none of them have met you either (though
I suspect Gueren to be a bit of a hub in this regard).  Our
"co-citation" distance is probably at least 3 and probably 4 or more.


>  
> Does that make sense?
Maybe!   It depends on what world you live in!
- Steve

[Steve Smith]

Anyone else here a fan of Ned (Edward T.) Hall's work?    I think I've
discussed this a bit with Agar.

Most relevant to the current discussion might be his books on human
perception of interpersonal space and of time.

"The Hidden Dimension" and "The Silent Language" both come to mind.

I believe that Ned is credited with both pioneering the field of
"cultural anthropology" and of coining the terms "Proxemics" and
"Polychronic"

Ned's notions of "High Context Culture"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_context_culture may be relevant to our
recent musings.

Ned spent one year (or just a semester) at the Los Alamos Ranch School
as a boy, lead a group of Negro soldiers in WWII and spent many years on
the Navajo and Hopi reservations on public works projects and trying to
understand their culture.  For his "honeymoon", he rode with his new
wife by horseback from Santa Fe back to his location on the reservation...

To my knowledge he is still alive (he would be 97 I think) in Santa
Fe.   It has been 10 years since I have spoken with him, however.

[Michael Agar]

Steve--sad to say Ned left several years ago, stroke. Pretty sure he  
did invent "proxemics" and "polychronic," though he sure didn't  
pioneer cultural anthropology. One date for that is when Franz Boas  
took his first job at Clark University in 1889. Later they hired  
Nick, so they've been on a roll for quite some time. The mainstream  
field didn't like him much, since he was "applied" before the market  
drove the entire field in that direction. A lot of his early work  
comes from his time with the U.S. State Department, later stuff from  
consulting. Hofstede's famous cross cultural psychology used many of  
the variables he invented, and the field of Intercultural  
Communication credits him as a founder. In the end the American  
Anthro Assn did give him the "Anthropology in Media" Award, late 90s  
I think. We were both at an intercultural communication conference in  
Germany years ago and he took the place by storm.

His books are still on the shelves.

Mike




On Aug 25, 2007, at 3:32 PM, steve smith wrote:

> Anyone else here a fan of Ned (Edward T.) Hall's work?    I think I've
> discussed this a bit with Agar.
>
> Most relevant to the current discussion might be his books on human
> perception of interpersonal space and of time.
>
> "The Hidden Dimension" and "The Silent Language" both come to mind.
>
> I believe that Ned is credited with both pioneering the field of
> "cultural anthropology" and of coining the terms "Proxemics" and
> "Polychronic"
>
> Ned's notions of "High Context Culture"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_context_culture may be relevant  
> to our
> recent musings.
>
> Ned spent one year (or just a semester) at the Los Alamos Ranch School
> as a boy, lead a group of Negro soldiers in WWII and spent many  
> years on
> the Navajo and Hopi reservations on public works projects and  
> trying to
> understand their culture.  For his "honeymoon", he rode with his new
> wife by horseback from Santa Fe back to his location on the  
> reservation...
>
> To my knowledge he is still alive (he would be 97 I think) in Santa
> Fe.   It has been 10 years since I have spoken with him, however.
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Tom Johnson]

If you're headed to Dave's Not Here out on Hickox, just as you cross St.
Francis and to your left (south of the liquor store across the street on
Hickox), is a house of almost Prairie Style architecture.  There's sort of a
crow's nest cupola on the top.  It's my understand that it is Hall's boyhood
home.

-tj

On 8/25/07, Michael Agar <magar at anth.umd.edu> wrote:

>
> Steve--sad to say Ned left several years ago, stroke. Pretty sure he
> did invent "proxemics" and "polychronic," though he sure didn't
> pioneer cultural anthropology. One date for that is when Franz Boas
> took his first job at Clark University in 1889. Later they hired
> Nick, so they've been on a roll for quite some time. The mainstream
> field didn't like him much, since he was "applied" before the market
> drove the entire field in that direction. A lot of his early work
> comes from his time with the U.S. State Department, later stuff from
> consulting. Hofstede's famous cross cultural psychology used many of
> the variables he invented, and the field of Intercultural
> Communication credits him as a founder. In the end the American
> Anthro Assn did give him the "Anthropology in Media" Award, late 90s
> I think. We were both at an intercultural communication conference in
> Germany years ago and he took the place by storm.
>
> His books are still on the shelves.
>
> Mike
>
>
>
>
> On Aug 25, 2007, at 3:32 PM, steve smith wrote:
>
> > Anyone else here a fan of Ned (Edward T.) Hall's work?    I think I've
> > discussed this a bit with Agar.
> >
> > Most relevant to the current discussion might be his books on human
> > perception of interpersonal space and of time.
> >
> > "The Hidden Dimension" and "The Silent Language" both come to mind.
> >
> > I believe that Ned is credited with both pioneering the field of
> > "cultural anthropology" and of coining the terms "Proxemics" and
> > "Polychronic"
> >
> > Ned's notions of "High Context Culture"
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_context_culture may be relevant
> > to our
> > recent musings.
> >
> > Ned spent one year (or just a semester) at the Los Alamos Ranch School
> > as a boy, lead a group of Negro soldiers in WWII and spent many
> > years on
> > the Navajo and Hopi reservations on public works projects and
> > trying to
> > understand their culture.  For his "honeymoon", he rode with his new
> > wife by horseback from Santa Fe back to his location on the
> > reservation...
> >
> > To my knowledge he is still alive (he would be 97 I think) in Santa
> > Fe.   It has been 10 years since I have spoken with him, however.
> >
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

--
==========================================
J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c)                                 505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com                 tom at jtjohnson.us

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete."
                                                   -- Buckminster Fuller
==========================================
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[phil henshaw]

> Phil
> >  
> > Do you know anyone else working on this?
> I have been "noodling" on it for some time.  Nothing
> published exactly.
> >  
> >  
> > In thinking over what the measure of  'distance'  between nodes in
> > networks means (the nominally 5 degrees of separation for
> people and
> > 19 degrees for web pages) it's occurred to me there are two very
> > different sides of connection.     Natural system networks
> tend to be
> > exceptionally well connected *as a whole* , but the
> trade-off is that
> > their sub-nets become exceptionally self-centered *as parts*.    
> > Thinking of highly connected nodes as 'hubs' explains how large
> > complex systems can work as a whole, but thinking of the
> regions they
> > connect as 'hives' explains how they can retain their
> independence as
> > parts.  
> I'm not sure how Hubs and Hives connect in your analogy.  
> Airports are
> Hubs and cities are Hives... if I understand your meaning.    

Well, the intense 'hive' of relationships between airline attendants at
an airline 'hub' also counts, though they appear at different levels of
the airline network organization.  A lot of the appearance of things has
to do with how you aggregate your data.  There probably are also a
number of more regional airline networks that are a 'hive' of sorts that
then serve 'hubs' of a larger system, like bush flights in Alaska that
would normally just 'not count' or for which data would be unavailable
when drawing the shape of the larger network.

>  I assume
> you are describing regional (relative) self-sufficiency with high
> internal connectivity (everyone in a small town knows
> everyone else) vs
> intra-regional connections (highway systems or airlines) which have a
> very high valency (number of travelers using a given
> entrance/exit ramp
> or airport).
right, and the relative independence of what happens inside a 'hive' and
how it forms a 'world of its own'.

>
> > What we seem to have in the scale-free design of natural systems
> > is also new evidence of how nature operates with lots of  
> 'different
> > worlds'.
> You are referring to the emergence of heirarchy in these systems
> (villages eventually connect into networks of villages/widely
> distributed rurals cluster to form regional centers/villages?)

Well, not quite.  The inception of the idea was more that what's
different between a mean distance in a network of 5 degrees of
separation between people, and 19 degrees when measuring the distance
between web pages, seems to indicate that the separation between our
mental worlds is vastly greater than our separations physically.  The
marvel is that when we walk down the street we're quite unaware that
many of the worlds of ideas in other people's minds you'd a need to go
to vast lengths to translate.  The scale free property that yields a
high degree of connection for the whole network also yields a high
degree of isolation/independence of the parts.  


> >    One opportunity that presents is a way to find the
> > functional boundaries of independent system parts topologically.


> Yes, this is where I have been noodling mostly.   The form/function
> duality.   By noticing the structural decomposition of a
> "system", one
> can maybe identify the subsystems within a system of systems.

I started doing that by identifying a system 'form' as growth and then
using that as a way to aggregate the locally involved network identified
with the same process, then locating various working parts needed for
the complex process.   I think that's a great method for some things,
but a statistical measure, a topology of 'hiveness', might be better for
the vast databases that are prevalent.  I've not been able to assemble a
network modeling and analysis tool kit for myself yet, for several
reasons, but I can see natural systems comprise networks of physical
parts that are diversely cross connected on many levels, forming
self-organizing cells with extensive local interconnection and sparse
remote connection.  Sometimes network maps wouldn't show the 'hive'
characteristic of natural systems when mapping 'nodes' as categories of
things, rather than individual physical ones.  If you map internet nodes
as 'cities', for example, you'll still get the scale free distribution
of connections, but no 'hives', because of how the data is aggregated.

>   I have
> observed this on at least two "engineered" systems...   a
>
> The first was a ~5000 node dynamical systems model of 17
> infrastructures
> built by dozens of individuals separately but with external
> references
> to other infrastructures.    Taken as a whole, the graph of
> this coupled
> dynamical system is a big hairball until one teases things apart a
> little more using clever graph layout techniques.   The result in my
> case is that the subsystems (not surprisingly) could be identified by
> their relatively high intersubsystem connectivity vs their relatively
> low intra-subsystem connectivity.
>
> The second is the Gene Ontology.   We used a variation on the
> same graph
> layout tools to cause the highly interconnected nodes to cluster
> together and the less intraconnected clusters to separate.
>
> >   Not the least benefit would be to help us discover the
> correct ways
> > to aggregate our data for other things.
> By using a modified (general/tunable) spring model, we were
> able to get
> the data to "self-aggregate" in ways that exposed the structure.
>
> Both systems were somewhat engineered (models of
> infrastructures built
> by humans and knowledge map of genetics) but described somewhat more
> natural systems (the union of all infrastructures recognized in 1st
> world human cultures, and the various genes responsible for
> important/common function in all studied life).

I'm not quite following what the network is composed of, or what
physical system it is embedded in.

> >  
> > The information boundaries surrounding self-connected parts of whole
> > systems also seem to define structural limits for the 'world views'
> > for things looking out from their insides.
> I'm not sure I know what you mean by "structural limits"...
> in the case
> of geospatial distributions of humans, the literal spatial separation
> between "villages" or "cities" tends to attenuate awareness of the
> "things" on the other end of the connection.   Illustrating (or
> contradicting that), Santa Fe has(Had) roads named "old pecos trail",
> "taos highway", "cerillos road" which were descriptive of the
> community
> in which you would find yourself eventually if you took that road.

When in New York everything is interpreted in relation to the 'hive' of
New York issues, and similarly when up camping in the mountains.  It's
one of the great pleasures of 'going places' that you get to switch the
whole context of your thinking for a while.   The idea of structural
limits is that either of these 'places' is defined by it's strongly
inter-connected connections and that that has an interior and edges.
As we go out to the edge of the domain of any 'hive' of connections, I
think we most often turn back, since what's beyond looks like nothing,
since it has no role in the hive.  When you're out in the woods the idea
of 'ordering out Chinese' is very far from reality and in the city
spitting on your knife and rubbing it on your pants before sitting down
in the dirt for dinner probably wouldn't occur to you either.   How many
worlds can a mind switch to?  Maybe a large number, and there's just no
telling what one in active in anyone else's at any given time.  ;-)

I guess it looks like I'm poking around with the absence of complex
local mesh like regions with their defining circular connections that
are so prevalent in nature but not prominent in either the discussion or
displays of most network maps.

>
> Am I understanding (or illuminating or confounding) your point?
> >     While the system as a whole may be well connected, those global
> > connections would naturally tend to be hidden for observers
> building
> > their own world view from within its locally well connected parts.  
> Like I buy a bag of salad at the produce dept of my local grocery,
> hardly thinking about the distribution warehouse (maybe) in
> Albuquerque
> where trucks from TX, MX, CA, AZ arrive with all sorts of
> produce, sort
> it out, bring it to the back door of my market, etc... ?  

Sure, the 'little world' of the shop may have a very special community
of issues that buzz around it and occupy all the people that pass
through as consumers, and you don't see where the salad greens come from
any more than you see what the truck driver does with the cash that
somehow gets from your pocket into his.   When you treat the shop as a
'node' you get an image of the larger scale system structures, but they
only function because the shop is also a 'hive'.  At the larger scale
the chatter between the truckers may become a 'hive' of relations that
itself could then relate to other things as a 'node'.   'Hives' and
'nodes' may often be the same thing, looked at differently.

> >  
> > I've been trying to explain my observation that the world views of
> > people are often exceptionally different, and yet we remain largely
> > unaware of it, mostly ignore it in conversation, and are relatively
> > uninterested in the deep communication problem it produces.
> In this, I hear you saying that people partition the graph of
> their life
> differently?  That in the above-described method of
> aggregation, we use
> different edge parameters to aggregate what we consider to be part of
> our "hive" and what is only accessible through another hub?  

Or that the 'hives' of relationships that we are in the middle of, look
as if they are the whole world, but are really only complete and
satisfying within themselves, and not actually the whole world.  Thus
the potential for illusion, and people living in literally different
worlds of ideas and both having to make allowances for how idiotic the
other must surely be.   My goal would be to reduce the problem to the
one you suggest, at least learn some way to recognize what local world
I'm speaking from and to, avoiding the complete structural disconnect
problem so there's just the matter of two perspectives of the same
thing.
 

> My parents
> use their computer/internet as a "hub"while many of us here
> use it as a
> "hive"?   One person's metric of distance might be "how long does it
> take me to get there?" while another's might be "how much
> does it cost
> me in $$ to get there?" while another might consider "how far
> is that as
> the proverbial crow flies?",  and another "how much
> irritation will I go
> through on the way there?"   The shift from 55 to 70+ freeway speeds
> made me newly aware of this... instead of driving to Denver
> on the back
> roads (at an easy 60-65 mph) vs the freeway at similar
> speeds, it is now
> more efficient in time to drive the (longer) freeway at 75-80 vs the
> back roads at 60-65 still.   The back roads afford better scenery and
> more entertaining places to stop... but the freeway affords
> the use of
> cruise-control and regularly provided stops with name-brand
> eateries.  
> Which is "closer"?

They all sound like good measures to me, so long as you're using the
same one.

> >     I have a list of other 'good reasons', but if it's a natural
> > consequence of the scale-free topology of natural system
> > networks, that could explain a lot about why humans so
> regularly fail
> > to communicate but think they do.
> I'm still missing something here I think.
> >   That our individual understandings of 'the universe' develop in
> > relation to sub-networks having local information horizons in every
> > direction, it means every 'hive' looks like the 'whole'.
> I do think I know what you are describing here, that the
> natural scale
> of human perception, when used as a theshold to the
> scale-free networks
> of relations they inhabit, yield a set of "separate worlds"...

It's forming an idea that scale free networks allow clusters to have
both tight internal connections with independent behaviors, while also
participating in larger systems to which the cluster is connected by
some group of its parts as hubs.  The thought is that observers within
such a cluster, human or other type of 'exploring system', might
naturally see the cluster as the whole world just because clusters tend
to have edges in all directions.  Perhaps some clusters might look more
like the 'whole' world if the links to other things were like that
between the trucker and the vegetable shop, as through-put, physically
connected through it but not participating in the hive of the activity
at all.


>
> Are you also noticing that different people have different
> qualitative
> perceptions (value systems) can live in different worlds
> whilst sharing
> the same space (physical and logical)?  This is what I want
> to attribute
> to self-organized graph layout using different parameters of
> the edges.
But what sort of data would reflect such things?  


> >   When real complex systems also cross-connect many kinds of  local
> > networks at once (environment, work, family, community,
> friendships,
> > beliefs, interests, etc.)  it adds completeness to the natural
> > topological 'illusion'.
> Can you rephrase what you mean by "topological 'illusion'"?  

I'm just referring to the possible appearance that there is nothing
beyond the 'hive', because when within a 'hive' of connections you the
strength of it's connections has boundaries in all directions, sort of
like a 'niche' within which a fall-off in connections is read as the end
of the world.  I also think an observant person might notice secret
exits from the hive, perhaps stopping to talk to the truck driver and
learning a little something about the world beyond the vegetable shop,
but that's making a break from the hive.

> I think I'm
> "in the same universe" as you on this but naturally not completely.
> >    Perhaps the very 'independence' of our world views is further
> > evidence of how deeply embedded in a larger system they are.
> Perhaps.   Quantitatively large as well as qualitatively.   Not just
> large graphs of graphs, but multi-graphs wherein the power-law of
> valency varies over the "type" of edge being considered.  
> Everyone is
> one-degree of separation apart by this e-mail list, but more
> like 2 or
> even 3 by personal connection.   I have never met you  and perhaps of
> the other FRIAMers I have met, none of them have met you
> either (though
> I suspect Gueren to be a bit of a hub in this regard).  Our
> "co-citation" distance is probably at least 3 and probably 4 or more.

The interesting thing about people is we all have different kinds of
doors we open to each other at different times, lots seeming to have to
do with finding links between world views we find are built so
differently some times.  Some of that is personal matters, and that
everybody makes up their own, but there's also a part that comes from
people not being aware of networks and that the world inside scale free
networks seems it might look like a different world from inside every
part.  An email forum and it's conventions like this, might look rather
strange to some, where people just throw all kinds of things out and
occasionally there's a little fast paced flurry that follows, producing
not so much more than a great accumulating kind of 'compost' to mull
over it seems.  

>
> >  
> > Does that make sense?
> Maybe!   It depends on what world you live in!
yea!

Phil
> - Steve
>
>

[Steve Smith]

Michael Agar wrote:
> Steve--sad to say Ned left several years ago, stroke.
The last news I had a year or so ago was that he was no longer "present"
but his body was still with us.

>  Pretty sure he  
> did invent "proxemics" and "polychronic," though he sure didn't  
> pioneer cultural anthropology. One date for that is when Franz Boas  
> took his first job at Clark University in 1889. Later they hired  
> Nick, so they've been on a roll for quite some time. The mainstream  
> field didn't like him much, since he was "applied" before the market  
> drove the entire field in that direction.
Perhaps I am thinking of anecdotal references to him pioneering
"'applied' cultural anthropology".
I had not realized "cultural anthropology" was even as recent as 100
years ago.

So, do you (Agar or others) feel that these concepts are relevant to the
current discussions about social networks?

[Roger Critchlow-2]

On 8/25/07, phil henshaw <pfh at synapse9.com> wrote:

>
> Well, the intense 'hive' of relationships between airline attendants at
> an airline 'hub' also counts, though they appear at different levels of
> the airline network organization.  A lot of the appearance of things has
> to do with how you aggregate your data.  There probably are also a
> number of more regional airline networks that are a 'hive' of sorts that
> then serve 'hubs' of a larger system, like bush flights in Alaska that
> would normally just 'not count' or for which data would be unavailable
> when drawing the shape of the larger network.


Hub and spoke or point to point, the main point of the airline system is to
get everyone home again, so it's actually composed of many, many, many
loops:  passengers make round trips; flight and cabin crews make multi-day
tours from their home base; aircraft return to maintenance stations of
different capabilities every three days, seven days, three weeks; gates
cycle through debarkation and embarkation many times a day.   The flight
schedule, the route map, is but a slice of the actual network.

-- rec --
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[Randy Burge-2]

Per the unanswered inquiry left in this thread:

Steve Smith: So, do you (Agar or others) feel that these concepts are
relevant to the current discussions about social networks?

I am curious to hear any replies/comments. My guess would be that Hall's
inter-cultural communications concepts have some relevance in social
networks discussions. Though, Proxemics is more of a physical distance tool,
where so much of the social network space is virtual, so I am not sure what
its adaptability to social network theory is.


------

On the matter of whether Edward is alive, I believe our Edward is still with
us. I see no evidence on google otherwise, which surely will be there when
he leaves us. I have long been a follower of Hall's and his cultural
anthropology works, so periodically I have checked on his continued presence
with us. I had lunch with him at the old Palace Restaurant at time or two,
now years ago.

There was another Edward T. Hall, an English physical scientist, mentioned
in Nature for having passed, but the English Edward T. lived from 1924-2001,
well within the life brackets of our Ned, as our Edward T. was known.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v413/n6856/full/413588a0.html

Much is made of our so-called tri-cultural harmony in New Mexico, most of it
folkloric and quaint. Ned's substantial contributions in the field of
cultural anthropology internationally are perhaps our greatest 'product' to
come from the NM cultural 'living lab.'

Hall was influenced at an early age by his intuitive observational awareness
about the frictions that exist between the region's dominant tri-cultural
mix. He was especially impacted by watching the racist-tinged attitudes of
the white WPA bureaucrat bosses towards Navajo workers on WPA road crews
during the Depression [covered in Ned's autobiography, West of the
Thirties].

Rather than whitewash the distinctions for tourism brochures as is often
done, he worked to understand why these frictions exist between the
different ethos so that cultural understanding/translation could move us
towards real harmony. He made his life-works and his name from following
this initial curiosity and social concern.

As cited in another NY Times story: "Edward T. Hall, the American
anthropologist who specialized in cultural differences and advised the U.S.
State Department during the the 1950s, once defined culture as the things
you take for granted."

Some links to Ned's stories on the web:

http://www.edwardthall.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_T._Hall

Edward T. Hall: Proxemic Theory, 1966
http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/13

Gifts of Wisdom: An Interview with Dr. Edward T. Hall
http://cms.interculturalu.com/theedge/v1i3Summer1998/sum98sorrellshall

NY Times: In Certain Circles, Two Is a Crowd
(Proxemics in these avatar times, 11/16/07 - subscription may be required)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/fashion/16space.html?ei=5088&en=2d57a58460
696fe0&ex=1321333200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

[Michael Agar]

On Aug 29, 2007, at 10:35 AM, Randy Burge wrote:

>
>
> On the matter of whether Edward is alive, I believe our Edward is  
> still with
> us. I see no evidence on google otherwise, which surely will be  
> there when
> he leaves us. I have long been a follower of Hall's and his cultural
> anthropology works, so periodically I have checked on his continued  
> presence
> with us. I had lunch with him at the old Palace Restaurant at time  
> or two,
> now years ago.

You're right. Could swear I read an obit in an anthro newsletter a  
while back, but his website shows him in 2005. Be the best mistake I  
ever made.


Mike