To understand is to perceive patterns.

Of course what this means is that true comprehension comes when the dots are revealed and you get Steven Johnson's long view when you see the big picture. This is the idea about patterns, patterns, patterns-- recurring patterns across different scales of reality. Paul Stamet talks about the mycelial archetype and how the information sharing systems that comprise the Internet look exactly like computer models of dark matter in the universe, look exactly like the neurons in a brain. They all share the same intertwingled filamental structure. It's the rise of networkism as big data advocates talk about how man-made systems are looking exactly like natural systems. The more we can measure, the more we can visualize. The more we can visualize, the more expands our consciousness by seeking recurring patterns across scales of reality. It blows my mind, and I think that technology increasingly is becoming an expander of human consciousness. It expands our thought, reach, and vision in revealing so much more. It's like whereas once I was blind, now I can see. Geoffrey West from the Santa Fe Institute is telling us that cities are really like organisms. Alleys are like capillaries. How is it possible that a man-made artificial technological system is behaving like a natural system? The more efficient it becomes, the more it's starting to look like nature, really interesting, weird stuff. But it makes me optimistic. It's like when Steven Johnson says, "If we can understand all this stuff, anything becomes possible." Right? It's the adjacent possible standing as a sort of shadow future, a map of all the ways the present can reinvent itself. It's - its beautiful stuff.

"Networks are everywhere. The brain is a network of nerve cells connected by axons, and cells themselves are networks of molecules connected by biochemical reactions. Societies, too, are networks of people linked by friendships, familial relationships and professional ties. On a larger scale, food webs and ecosystems can be represented as networks of species. And networks pervade technology: the Internet, power grids and transportation systems are but a few examples. Even the language we are using to convey these thoughts to you is a network, made up of words connected by syntactic relationships." 'For decades, we assumed that the components of such complex systems as the cell, the society, or the Internet are randomly wired together. In the past decade, an avalanche of research has shown that many real networks, independent of their age, function, and scope, converge to similar architectures, a universality that allowed researchers from different disciplines to embrace network theory as a common paradigm.' Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, writes about recurring patterns and liquid networks: "Coral reefs are sometimes called "the cities of the sea", and part of the argument is that we need to take the metaphor seriously: the reef ecosystem is so innovative because it shares some defining characteristics with actual cities. These patterns of innovation and creativity are fractal: they reappear in recognizable form as you zoom in and out, from molecule to neuron to pixel to sidewalk. Whether you're looking at original innovations of carbon-based life, or the explosion of news tools on the web, the same shapes keep turning up... when life gets creative, it has a tendency to gravitate toward certain recurring patterns, whether those patterns are self-organizing, or whether they are deliberately crafted by human agents" Patrick Pittman from Dumbo Feather adds: "Put simply: cities are like ant colonies are like software is like slime molds are like evolution is like disease is like sewage systems are like poetry is like the neural pathways in our brain. Everything is connected. "...Johnson uses 'The Long Zoom' to define the way he looks at the worldif you concentrate on any one level, there are patterns that you miss. When you step back and simultaneously consider, say, the sentience of a slime mold, the cultural life of downtown Manhattan and the behavior of artificially intelligent computer code, new patterns emerge." James Gleick, author of THE INFORMATION, has written how the cells of an organism are nodes in a richly interwoven communications network, transmitting and receiving, coding and decoding and how Evolution itself embodies an ongoing

exchange of information between organism and environment.. (Its an ECO-SYSTEM, an EVOLVING NETWORK) "If you want to understand life," Wrote Richard Dawkins, "don't think about vibrant, throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology." (AND THINK ABOUT NETWORKS!! Author Paul Stammetts writes about The Mycelial Archetype: He compares the mushroom mycelium with the overlapping information-sharing systems that comprise the Internet, with the networked neurons in the brain, and with a computer model of dark matter in the universe. All share this densely intertwingled filamental structure.

Geoffrey WEST on The sameness of organisms, cities, and corporations: blog.ted.com/2011/07/26/qa-with-geoffrey-west/

Stephen Johnson's LONG VIEW nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08games.html?pagewanted=all dumbofeather.com/blog/post/on-slime-molds-and-sewage-steven-johnson-s-originof-the-idea/ guardian.co.uk/science/2010/oct/19/steven-johnson-good-ideas? cat=science&type=article

BARABASI's Scale Free Networks: scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scale-free-networks

Manuel Lima's Visual Complexity: visualcomplexity.com

Paul Stammets Myceilum is everywhere: realitysandwich.com/google_and_myceliation_consciousness