Kristf Nyri

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Kristóf Nyíri

• The Networked Mind
• The Mediated Mind Rethinking Representation
• 27th and 28th May, The London Knowledge Lab
• Institute of Education, University of London
• The Philosophy of Technology-Enhanced Learning
• Special Interest Group Symposium

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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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The Networked Brain? the adult brain has around
100 billion neurons, linked to each other by
axons? most axons are connecting nearby neurons,
within the same functional region ? some axons
link up with neurons in neighbouring brain
regions? a small number of axons link brain
regions that are far apart
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The Networked BrainThe brain is a
small-world network in the sense of Milgram and
WattsStrogatz, with weak ties connecting
clustered nodes.Stanley Milgram, The
Small-World Problem, Psychology Today, 1967.
Mark S. Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak
Ties", American Journal of Sociology, 1973 .John
Guare, Six Degrees of Separation A Play,
1990.Duncan J. Watts and Steven H. Strogatz,
Collective Dynamics of Small-World Networks,
Nature 393 (1998).
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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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Networked Ideas

• That any interesting system of ideas forms
  a network, that ideas cannot really be presented
  in a linear order (the order forced upon us by
  the culture of the printed book), is a
  fundamental thought of Wittgenstein. As he put it
  in the 1938 version of the Preface to what was
  eventu-ally published as the Philosophical
  Investigations Es zeigte sich mir, daß das
  Beste, was ich schreiben konnte, immer nur
  philosophische Bemerkungen bleiben würden daß
  meine Ge-danken bald erlahmten, wenn ich
  versuchte, sie, gegen ihre natürliche Neigung, in
  einem Ge-leise festzuhalten. Dies hing freilich
  auch mit der Natur des Gegenstandes selbst
  zusammen. Dieser Gegenstand zwingt uns, das
  Gedankengebiet kreuz quer, nach allen
  Richtungen hin zu durchreisen so daß die
  einzelnen Gedanken in einem verwickelten Netz von
  Beziehungen zu einander stehen. The version of
  the Preface actually printed does not employ the
  term network, but does preserve the initial
  message His way of composition, Wittgenstein
  wrote, was, of course, connected with the very
  nature of the investigation. For this compels us
  to travel over a wide field of thought
  criss-cross in every direction. This passage was
  quoted by McLuhan in the late 1950s, with the
  astonishing - but to my mind correct - sen-tence
  added All that need to be said is that
  Wittgenstein is here trying to explain the
  charac-ter of oral as opposed to written
  philosophy. The thought that ideas, to be
  functional, must form a network is already there
  in the work of a philosopher highly esteemed by
  Wittgenstein William James.

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Networked Ideas

• William James on the association of
  memories (The Principles of Psychology, 1890, ch.
  XVI)
• Let n be a past event o its setting
  (concomitants, date, ... ) and m some present
  thought or fact which may ap-propriately become
  the occasion of its recall. Let the
  nerve-centres, active in the thought of m, n, and
  o, be represented by M, N, and O,
  respectively...
• the more other facts a fact is associated
  with in the mind, the better possession of it our
  memory retains. ... Togeth-er, they form a
  network of attachments... The secret of a good
  memory is thus the secret of forming diverse and
  multiple associations with every fact we care to
  retain.

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Networked IdeasDouwe Draaisma, in his Why
Life Speeds Up As You Get Older How Memory
Shapes Our Past (2001) referring to Ribots Les
maladies de la mémoire (1881) time markers
serving as milestones or signposts along our
path, all starting from the same point but
spreading out in different directions. ... time
markers do indeed order net-works of
associations... Typical time markers are my
first meeting with..., the first time I...
what is nowadays called Ribots law ...
the stronger associative links between older
memories that are often repeated and hence more
closely linked with other memories

• The network of ideas is ordered and held together
  by ideas having an extraordinarily great number
  of links to other ideas.

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Networked IdeasAlbert-László Barabásis theory
of nodes and hubs Albert-László Barabási and
Réka Albert, Emergence of Scaling in Random
Networks, Science, vol. 286 (15 Oct. 1999)
Barabási, Linked The New Science of Networks,
2002 Barabási, Science of Networks From
Society to the Web, in K. Nyíri (ed.), A Sense
of Place, 2005. Many fundamental networks in
nature and society are scale-free it is not
yet clear if the neurons of the human brain form
such a network.
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Networked Ideas

• Networks of ideas stored externally, on paper or
  on the web
• By the end of the 17th century the collapse
  of the encyclopedic ideal a fragmen-tation of
  knowledge. Yet Ephraim Chambers in his
  Cyclopaedia of 1728, though presenting the
  entries in an alphabetical order, still pesented
  a View of Knowl-edge - an overview map of the
  branches of science - and was still intent on
  showing, by a Chain of References, the
  conceptual links between entries. The medium of
  the printed book, however, was not conducive to
  his cross-referencing ambitions.

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Networked IdeasTitle page of Chambers
Cyclopaedia
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Networked IdeasThe View of Knowledge in
Chambers Cyclopaedia
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Networked Ideas

• Networks of ideas stored externally, on paper or
  on the web
• By contrast, the web offers an ideal medium
  for building a densely and conspicuously
  connected network of ideas.

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Networked Ideas The Hungarian
Virtual Encyclopedia map of entries.
Spontaneously emerging links show certain
entries to function as hubs,
providing for connections between the rest of the
nodes PHILOSOPHY
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Networked Ideas The Hungarian
Virtual Encyclopedia map of entries.
PHILOSOPHY
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Networked Ideas The Hungarian
Virtual Encyclopedia map of entries.
SCIENCE
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Networked Ideas The Hungarian
Virtual Encyclopedia map of entries.
INFORMATION
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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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The Networked Hungarian

• For a broader background of this section of my
  talk see my papers
• From Palágyi to Wittgenstein
• Austro-Hungarian Philosophies of Language and
  Communication (1999)
• and
• Netzwerk und Erkenntnismacht (2003)
• Explanatory hypotheses
• disturbed communication and
  atypical networking

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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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The Networked HungarianCommunication and the
Mediated Mind

• Menyhért (Melchior) Palágyi language is not just
  a means of communication it is, in all its forms
  as spoken, written, etc. also a vehicle of
  thinking (1902-1904)
• József Balogh, Voces Paginarum Beiträge zur
  Geschichte des lauten Lesens und Schreibens"
  (1921/1926)
• Béla Balázs It is not the same spirit that is
  expressed now in words, now in gestures. ... For
  the possibility of expressing ourselves
  conditions in advance our thoughts and feelings.
  ... Psychological and logical anal-yses have
  proven that our words are not subsequent
  representations of our thoughts, but forms which
  will from the beginning determine the latter
  (1924).
• István Hajnal referring to the beginnings of
  alphabetic literacy in Greece Writing vividly
  accompanies the human being's outer and inner
  life, objectifying it and thus rendering it
  capable of being observed. It links to-gether the
  past and the present in the life of both the
  individual and the community, it encourages
  rational thinking, and enables the building of
  complicated mental edifices (1933). -- referring
  to universities in the 12th-13th centuries The
  quarters of students should not be regarded as
  mere necessities of a common sub-sistence but, in
  the first place, as forms of educational methods
  ... It is simply indispensable for a student to
  have groups of mates, and elders around himself
  they are his living educational tools, carriers
  of scientific material available for exercises
  (1952).

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The Networked HungarianCommunication and the
Mediated Mind

• THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
• LANGUAGE PART OF AN EXTENDED MIND
• THE COMMUNITY OF SPEAKERS PART OF THE
  INDIVIDUALS EXTENDED MIND

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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
28
Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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The Networked HungarianTheories of Networks

• ? peripherally-fated
• ? networks away from home
• ? Barabási and his Hungarian roots/sources

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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
32
Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
34
Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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The Network IndividualThe Republic of Letters

• Scholarly/scientific correspondence in the
  17th-18th centuries
• networks with hubs
• In my paper From Texts to Pictures The
  New Unity of Science I refer to Diana Crane's
  Invisible Colleges Diffusion of Knowledge in
  Scientific Communities (1972). The term
  "in-visible colleges" - a term that first seems
  to occur in the Boyle-Hartlib correspondence -
  alludes to informal groups of scientific elites
  through whom the communication of informa-tion
  both within a field and across fields is
  directed. The members of research areas, Crane
  found, "were not so much linked to each other
  directly but were linked to each other
  indi-rectly" through the "highly influential
  members" belonging to the elite. These
  prestigious figures "were surrounded individually
  by subgroups of scientists who looked to them for
  information. They in turn communicated
  intensively with one another". As Crane, quoting
  another researcher, writes it is through "the
  central scientists" that "information may be
  transferred to all other scientists in the
  network."

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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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The Network IndividualCollective Thinking

• Being a node or a hub in the network of
  traditional letter writers does not save one from
  extended periods of solitary thinking, nor from
  the illusion that it is such thinking that gives
  rise to deep and interesting thoughts.
• But this really is an illusion. As Bacon saw
  whosoever hath his mind fraught with many
  thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify
  and break up, in the commu-nicating and
  discoursing with another he tosseth his thoughts
  more easily he mar-shalleth them more orderly,
  he seeth how they look when they are turned into
  words finally, he waxeth wiser than himself and
  that more by an hours discourse, than by a days
  meditation. It was well said by Themistocles, to
  the king of Persia, That speech was like cloth of
  Arras, opened and put abroad whereby the imagery
  doth appear in figure whereas in thoughts they
  lie but as in packs. (Francis Bacon, Of
  Friendship. - This quote was painfully missing
  from my talk Collective Thinking. I am grateful
  to Zsuzsanna Kondor for having in the meantime
  furnished me with it.)

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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
41
Kristóf Nyíri The Networked Mind The
Networked Brain Networked Ideas The Networked
Hungarian Communication and the Mediated Mind
Theories of Networks The Network Individual
The Republic of Letters Collective Thinking
Our Network Revolution
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The Network IndividualOur Network Revolution

• ? I have begun using the term network
  individual, for designating what I think is a
  new type of personality - and in a sense also the
  return to a primordial type of personality - in
  the early stages of the project COMMUNICATIONS IN
  THE 21ST CENTURY (cf. http//21st.century.phil-ins
  t.hu/2Summ.htm, see also my preface to the volume
  K. Nyíri (ed.), Mobile Democracy, p. 16).
• ? Barry Wellman uses the term networked
  individualism. His description Peo-ple remain
  connected, but as individuals rather than being
  rooted in the home bases of work unit and
  household. Individuals switch rapidly between
  their social net-works. Each person separately
  operates his networks to obtain information,
  collabo-ration, orders, support, sociability, and
  a sense of belonging.
• ? The network individual is not the uprooted,
  free-floating being as depicted by Wellman
  he/she is the person reintegrated into the
  collective thinking of society, the individual
  whose mind is mediated, once again, by the minds
  of those forming his/her smaller or larger
  community.

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Thank you for you kind attention. To show my
gratitude, here is a lovely bunch of flowers from
my garden in Dunabogdány.