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Stuart Henderson's avatar

I am reminded of Marshall McLuhan.

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

Yes it's definitely echoed, though in a larger scale as it's not just the medium changing the message but the topology of the medium connecting us that changes the messages which gets boosted.

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Ben Reid's avatar

Hugely insightful, extremely well structured and measured analysis. Thank you Rohit🙏

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

Thanks for the kind words!

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Étienne Fortier-Dubois's avatar

This is great! I particularly enjoyed the point about microcultures and the macroculture. It's easy to make a point that the general trend is towards either of these, while missing the subtle dynamics that are at play. Maybe both microcultures and the macroculture are becoming more powerful just because, thanks to the density you describe, there's *more* culture overall.

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

Yes! It's both, and the nuances are what's interesting I think. There's more microcultures but discovery is hard and you end up feeling like it's a set of fleeting microcultures than anything with a sense of permanence. A feeling of standing amidst flux.

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Dahlia Daos's avatar

Is there a way to interact with the network with intention? Can you "drive" how the network reacts and create pressure towards certain kinds of topology? If you were to apply enough pressure in enough points, could you ultimately change how information spreads and prevent dense clusters from forming?

Also, do you know of Geoffrey West's power laws about energy use? He calls it the fourth law of thermodynamics. I don't understand anything on the information side of entropy, but is there a similar kind of power law at work here? Is information density a measure of entropy?

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

You should be able to do this through controlling the information flow and centrality of nodes. Arguably this is what we already do unintentionally. And yes it has echoes of Geoff West's theory. Thinking of information density as a measure of entropy is really intriguing.

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Dahlia Daos's avatar

Also, can you recommend a good primer on networks?

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Dahlia Daos's avatar

What would intentional control of information flow and centrality of nodes require/imply?

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

I learnt from Duncan watts and geoff west Santa Fe papers primarily iirc. And that's the main media and culture narrative power here, as one example.

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Paul Humphries's avatar

Of course there's also the complication that we're not just nodes but apes, and that each ape is unique, and we don't yet understand how DNA affects our behavior, nor do we understand how the brain works.

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Derek Beyer's avatar

I'm really curious about how this interacts with geography. So much of our networking once took place in meatspace and potential connections were largely defined by proximity. Mail, newspapers, radio, and television certainly affected that, but I'd imagine that it mainly supported more scale rather than divorcing networks from geography entirely.

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

Geography helps create active separation in real life, but in the digital world there are no separations

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Huvinesh Rajendran's avatar

What a great read ! Keep up the good work.

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ProtopiacOne's avatar

Excellent problem statement! Any hope of design-building some solutions, or better to just wait to see what emerges?

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

If you have ideas ...

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ProtopiacOne's avatar

I had some ideas... but then AI came around and changed the calculus on ideas...

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Angela Natividad's avatar

This is so orderly and satisfying

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

Thank you! That's the highest praise .

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Scott Werner's avatar

This post couldn’t be more timely! I’ve recently been feeling and discussing similar ideas with people around software development.

We’ve noticed there isn’t really a “counter culture” anymore, and I really like the dark forest theory that if you connect to the wider internet too soon before the ideas have had a chance to mature, it dies out.

One illustrative example I think is the collective outrage of the typescript community when DHH decided to move off of it in a library he was building (that most didn’t even use). He’s already in a position he can weather the attacks, but some new community probably not so much.

I guess if people start breaking away into these cultural islands, if they’re able to sustain long enough to let their ideas mature and break out, we’ll see much more fully formed, groundbreaking things coming from them and not really seeing the intermediate products unless you explicitly seek them out?

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Chris Fedrizzi's avatar

Shit brother. I am too stupid for this essay yet. Where should I get started to learn about networks? Much appreciate the references, if you have suggestions.

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

Oh man I'm sorry, that's a failure of writing on my part. Maybe this is good? https://meltingasphalt.com/interactive/going-critical/

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Chris Fedrizzi's avatar

Thanks brother. I don't think it's your writing, I just need to do the homework before reading it again. I'll learn more about networks and come back here soon. Thanks!

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Chris Fedrizzi's avatar

Thank you Antony! I am diving deep into the pdf. Really good stuff.

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Antony Turner's avatar

Glad you're enjoying it. There is a free video course too, which is really good.

https://www.edx.org/learn/computer-programming/cornell-university-networks-crowds-and-markets

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Priscilla Estes's avatar

Very thoughtful. Thank you. My angst level decreased once you defined the problem.

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

Thank you!

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Hollis Robbins (@Anecdotal)'s avatar

Fantastic essay -- thinking of course of Ferdinand Tönnies's great work on Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (1887) which has been so influential and prescient. We make and remake our networks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeinschaft_and_Gesellschaft

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Rohit Krishnan's avatar

Thank you! I'm not familiar with it, will read!

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ProtopiacOne's avatar

Excellent problem statement! Any hope of design-building some solutions, or better to just wait to see what emerges?

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