network 'hubs' v. 'hives'

[William E Craven]

Phil, what you describe here is exactly what Lippman describes in his
book.  Lippman notes that most people in the early 20th century literally
have very small circles of acquaintances, and then have even smaller
circles of confidantes, and that within each of these hives there's a
certain consistency of opinion (there are also certain individuals who
become recognized arbiters of opinions for the groups).  A group of
workingmen of Irish descent might have little ral contact with
shopkeepers, businessmen, and bankers of English, German and Scandinavian
descent, and this separation could be compounded if the workmen were
Catholic while the business owners were Protestant.  Neither group could
have a realistic idea of what "Arabia" or "China" was like, and if by
chance that some member of the group had actually been to one of those
places the group's opinions would be modified somewhat to incorporate the
biases of the individual.

In the towns and smaller cities of his time there were circles of elites,
centered on its wealthiest members, who because they have greater access
to information from other parts of the world (through travel, cables,
mails, telephones, etc.) largely become the arbiters of each town's world
view .  The opinions from these inner circles spread outward through the
"gregarious members" who straddled multiple circles.  But, fundamentally,
those elites themselves are limited in what they can know as well, since
few if any of them have ever been to Arabia or China, and what news they
have of these places, like with the workingmen, is filtered through the
biases of those who are reporting it.

If by chance a Chinaman were to pass through town the people would tend
to only see their preset stereotypes in the man unless something dramatic
occurred which forced them to re-evaluate their stereotypes.  Lippman
indicates that it is *necessary* for stereotypes to be formed in order to
put a frame on any news or information which comes in.  Thus, the
visiting Chinaman - before he even arrives - cannot be exactly like the
people of the town he visits.  He must be crafty, or shifty, or
industrious, or lazy, or a thief, or a threat to young women's morals,
etc.  When he arrives the people look for those traits which reaffirm
their stereotypes and ignore those which are contrary.

Lippman discusses how these barriers can be breached to form a common
will, primarily in the context of how propoganda was used to form public
opinion during WWI, but notes the difficulties in achieving this and
sustaining it.  The Allies essentially stopped being allies on 11/11/18
and reverted to squabbling partisans pursuing their own interests, and
just as quickly the people in each of the Allied nations ceased thinking
in terms of how their actions affected the national goal of fighting the
Central Powers and reverted to their parochial interest.

Bill
 
On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:49:54 -0400 "phil henshaw" <pfh at synapse9.com>
writes:
> Bill,
> Thanks, I missed your reply.   I tried to see if there was a cheap copy
> of "Public Opinion" on Amazon, but for once they didn't have it!  My
> question is about how the property of especially high connectedness
also
> produces unusual isolation, when you look at the neighborhoods  dense
> inter-connection from the bottom up rather than top down.   A small
> group of bloggers will blog almost exclusively to themselves, you  can
> see it in the network maps.   Their conversation also comes to seem
like
> the whole world to them.   Because their links are only 'almost' all
to
> themselves, the rest of the network is potentially informed  (through
> their occasional gregarious members) about what the little cell  that
> thinks it's the world is talking about.  The little cell,
unfortunately
> though, learns about the rest of the world in inverse proportion!  
>
>
> One of the structural questions about the topology of the networks
that
> natural systems tend to produce is how this 'tiny world' effects  the
> view of an uninformed observer who finds themselves, say, born in  one.
> My impression is that every 'tiny world' is a largely  self-sufficient
> intense hive of activity, and that when you get to the edge of it,
> instead of seeing unknown worlds beyond, you see nothing at all,  not
> even an absence of links.   The absence of links between the  internal
> traffic of these 'tiny worlds' and the greater network is visible  only
> from the larger network's hubs, though their view will have little
depth
> and no language for the larger system to use for talking to the  'tiny
> worlds' they connect together.
>
> What I'm getting to is that there seems to be much more than a
> subjective 'stereotyping' going on in how we form our stereotyped
> images.   A profound structural 'tiny world bias' seems inherent in
how
> ural systems develop network connections.   Hoping not to overload
> the idea, but there's one more thing.   In the information flows of
any
> 'tiny world' network hive there will be a sharp fall-off of
information

> quality about the rest of the world.   That boundary is where  people
> need to start filling their own guesses, building a fantasy world  of
> 'image patches' to make their own sense of things complete.  Often  the
> lazy shortcut for doing that is simply filling in with reverse
> self-images for whatever is 'alien' to the dense information space  of
> their own hive.
>
> Does that sound possible?
>
> Phil
>
> >
> > Phil, it sounds from the follow-on conversation so far like
> > you're mainly interested in *quantifying* the relationships
> > between "hives" and "hubs", which is well outside my purview,
> > but if you're interested in a discussion of *why* different
> > people fail to effectively communicate, and how that relates
> > to the circle of people with which they regularly interact,
> > then I'd strongly recommend Walter Lippman's "Public
> > Opinion", and in particular the first three sections of the
> > book.  Despite being written when Harding was president,
> > Lippman's observations about how the limited ability of an
> > individual to directly interface/interact with all the
> > world's information creates a need for stereotypes through
> > which that information is filtered, and that once that
> > information is filtered you effectively have different
> > preceptions of reality which impact the ability to
> > communicate, still make sense in the internet age.  He also
> > has a good discussion of why individuals largely reject
> > information which doesn't fit into their existing stereotypes.
> >
> > Bill
> >
> >
>
>
>
>

 
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[Phil Henshaw-2]

Bill,
Do you think there's anything to my idea that part of the reason for the
negative images assigned to 'aliens'  from the disconnected parts of the
larger world, about whom we know almost nothing, is that it's just an easier
way to cover up the natural edges where the quality of information
falls?   As we look off into the information 'darkness' surrounding any
dense information space, where all its connections stop, we get nervous and
need to make up things.   Projecting from our imagination a negative mirror
images of ourselves to fill out the picture could be about the easiest way
to fake the gaps and create an artificial whole image of the world.    That
would suggest that fear of allowing unknowns and laziness is what does it...



On 9/6/07, wecraven at juno.com <wecraven at juno.com> wrote:

>
>  Phil, what you describe here is exactly what Lippman describes in his
> book.  Lippman notes that most people in the early 20th century literally
> have very small circles of acquaintances, and then have even smaller circles
> of confidantes, and that within each of these hives there's a certain
> consistency of opinion (there are also certain individuals who become
> recognized arbiters of opinions for the groups).  A group of workingmen of
> Irish descent might have little ral contact with shopkeepers, businessmen,
> and bankers of English, German and Scandinavian descent, and this separation
> could be compounded if the workmen were Catholic while the business owners
> were Protestant.  Neither group could have a realistic idea of what "Arabia"
> or "China" was like, and if by chance that some member of the group had
> actually been to one of those places the group's opinions would be modified
> somewhat to incorporate the biases of the individual.
>
> In the towns and smaller cities of his time there were circles of elites,
> centered on its wealthiest members, who because they have greater access to
> information from other parts of the world (through travel, cables, mails,
> telephones, etc.) largely become the arbiters of each town's world view .
> The opinions from these inner circles spread outward through the "gregarious
> members" who straddled multiple circles.  But, fundamentally, those elites
> themselves are limited in what they can know as well, since few if any of
> them have ever been to Arabia or China, and what news they have of these
> places, like with the workingmen, is filtered through the biases of those
> who are reporting it.
>
> If by chance a Chinaman were to pass through town the people would tend to
> only see their preset stereotypes in the man unless something dramatic
> occurred which forced them to re-evaluate their stereotypes.  Lippman
> indicates that it is *necessary* for stereotypes to be formed in order to
> put a frame on any news or information which comes in.  Thus, the visiting
> Chinaman - before he even arrives - cannot be exactly like the people of the
> town he visits.  He must be crafty, or shifty, or industrious, or lazy, or a
> thief, or a threat to young women's morals, etc.  When he arrives the people
> look for those traits which reaffirm their stereotypes and ignore those
> which are contrary.
>
> Lippman discusses how these barriers can be breached to form a common
> will, primarily in the context of how propoganda was used to form public
> opinion during WWI, but notes the difficulties in achieving this and
> sustaining it.  The Allies essentially stopped being allies on 11/11/18 and
> reverted to squabbling partisans pursuing their own interests, and just as
> quickly the people in each of the Allied nations ceased thinking in terms of
> how their actions affected the national goal of fighting the Central Powers
> and reverted to their parochial interest.
>
> Bill
>
> On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:49:54 -0400 "phil henshaw" <pfh at synapse9.com>
> writes:
> > Bill,
> > Thanks, I missed your reply.   I tried to see if there was a cheap copy
> > of "Public Opinion" on Amazon, but for once they didn't have it!  My
> > question is about how the property of especially high connectedness
> also
> > produces unusual isolation, when you look at the neighborhoods  dense
> > inter-connection from the bottom up rather than top down.   A small
> > group of bloggers will blog almost exclusively to themselves, you  can
> > see it in the network maps.   Their conversation also comes to seem
> like
> > the whole world to them.   Because their links are only 'almost' all  to
> > themselves, the rest of the network is potentially informed  (through
> > their occasional gregarious members) about what the little cell  that
> > thinks it's the world is talking about.  The little cell,  unfortunately
> > though, learns about the rest of the world in inverse proportion!
> >
> >
> > One of the structural questions about the topology of the networks  that
> > natural systems tend to produce is how this 'tiny world' effects  the
> > view of an uninformed observer who finds themselves, say, born in  one.
> > My impression is that every 'tiny world' is a largely  self-sufficient
> > intense hive of activity, and that when you get to the edge of it,
> > instead of seeing unknown worlds beyond, you see nothing at all,  not
> > even an absence of links.   The absence of links between the  internal
> > traffic of these 'tiny worlds' and the greater network is visible  only
> > from the larger network's hubs, though their view will have little
> depth
> > and no language for the larger system to use for talking to the  'tiny
> > worlds' they connect together.
> >
> > What I'm getting to is that there seems to be much more than a
> > subjective 'stereotyping' going on in how we form our stereotyped
> > images.   A profound structural 'tiny world bias' seems inherent in  how
> > ural systems develop network connections.   Hoping not to overload
> > the idea, but there's one more thing.   In the information flows of  any
> > 'tiny world' network hive there will be a sharp fall-off of  information
> > quality about the rest of the world.   That boundary is where  people
> > need to start filling their own guesses, building a fantasy world  of
> > 'image patches' to make their own sense of things complete.  Often  the
> > lazy shortcut for doing that is simply filling in with reverse
> > self-images for whatever is 'alien' to the dense information space  of
> > their own hive.
> >
> > Does that sound possible?
> >
> > Phil
> >
> > >
> > > Phil, it sounds from the follow-on conversation so far like
> > > you're mainly interested in *quantifying* the relationships
> > > between "hives" and "hubs", which is well outside my purview,
> > > but if you're interested in a discussion of *why* different
> > > people fail to effectively communicate, and how that relates
> > > to the circle of people with which they regularly interact,
> > > then I'd strongly recommend Walter Lippman's "Public
> > > Opinion", and in particular the first three sections of the
> > > book.  Despite being written when Harding was president,
> > > Lippman's observations about how the limited ability of an
> > > individual to directly interface/interact with all the
> > > world's information creates a need for stereotypes through
> > > which that information is filtered, and that once that
> > > information is filtered you effectively have different
> > > preceptions of reality which impact the ability to
> > > communicate, still make sense in the internet age.  He also
> > > has a good discussion of why individuals largely reject
> > > information which doesn't fit into their existing stereotypes.
> > >
> > > Bill
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>

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