Dis+-+embedded+Knowledge

There is another dynamic, which is overlaid/underlaid/projected from the 2D graphic below, namely the occilation between embeddedness and dispersal, which happens at various stages, including:
 * Moving on again: dispersals ...**

1. Genetic information embedded in RNA/DNA, dispersed in viral, bacterial, and sexual 'relations' (see [|here]), as well as throughout organisms. 2. Social gestures, embedded in signs and texts (from the dances of bees, onwards), dispersed in interaction and networks. 3. Social semiotics, embedded in human artefacts, dispersed in interaction, networks, media, inter-net-works (web 1 & 2), CoP. 4. Web (3) semiotics, embedded in web artefacts, dispersed on the web and in augmented-realilty interactions, and spectal semiotics (Second Life, Games, avatars). 5. Web (4) functions, embedded in things and networks of things, dispersed in interactions across artefact-networks. 6. Temporal cycles: iterative cycles, embedded in places, days, and years; dispersed across global, 24/7, continuous flows (See Knorr-Cetina (2005) on 'micro-global networks' and the new 'temporalisation'.

The picture, below, needs an update to incorporate web3.0 (augmented reality), which promises to 'seemlessly' integrate and overlay virtual-knowledge onto embodied perception, and web4.0 (internet of things), which is already re-embedding the end points of virtual-networks back into the material world. But for the meantime I will leave those two tasks in the hands of the reader, and invite any additions/variations to this diagram to be posted here. Of course in one sense 'all knowledge is virtual', or all value (financial and other) is derivative (or multi-derivative). Perhaps we could say that "meaning is made in the world, knowledge is made in (abstraction) alongside it", and both are circulated and connected through the web?
 * Moving on ... to web 3.0 and 4.0**

The issue of embeddedness has now shifted to clouds, augmented reality, and how we are embedded in them. See a brief post on the [|discourse blog], and more to follow ...
 * Embedded in the Clouds?**

The [|Connectivism JAM] (macro-network 'course') raised interesting questions about the nature of knowledge and where it 'resides', and came to the conclusion that its all in the network - the 'between parts', i.e. in and amongst all the nodes (human, machine, inert, etc). I was trying to map out the big picture (as one does) of where all the bits and pieces are situated, and whether, as I suspected, there are radically different KINDS of domains in which knowledge is situated, captured, networked, etc.

The big picture came out like this .... and the commentary came out like this ...


 * The Genealogy of Creating and Embedding Knowledge in CANs (Complex Adaptive Networks) and VANs (Virtual Adaptive Networks). **

Knowledge: in broad terms, can be defined as the **capacity for effective action**. This includes a wide range of subcategories: strategic alliances; contextual knowledge; procedural knowledge; ante-formal knowledge (in social networks – online and offline, this is knowledge that has not [yet] been formalised), as well as the ability to find, access, contribute to, and use knowledge and make virtual alliances, (aka connectivist or virtual adaptive network knowledge). This also includes, by definition, the ability to access information as required.

Knowledge is embedded in humans in a range of forms, and at a range of levels. This includes consciousness, (cerebral); tacit, subconscious, reflex ‘knowledge’ and even instinctual ‘knowledge’ at lower brain (‘cerebellar’) level; and skeleto-muscular ‘knowledge’ at subcranial levels.
 * Knowledge Embedded in Humans **

It is probably useful to restrict ‘knowledge’ to **//acquired//** capacities (so no instincts or reflexes), but //capacity for effective action//, (as opposed to information) depends on your facility at many levels in the body, so drawing a dividing line somewhere up the spine, or at the base of the skull, is going to be difficult if not impossible to do. The body is a gestalt network, not an assemblage of discrete and discontinuous parts.

Those aspects of our ‘capacity’ that are based on information at cellular level are easier to deal with, as although they are //acquired// within the evolution of the species (phylogenetically) it still seems to be very clear that they are not acquired at an individual (ontogenetic) level - although that might need [|some qualification] now. Interesting though, DNA is the most basic //material semiotic// – the earliest radical, //dis-embedding// of material (the four proteins of DNA) from their function //as material// to function //as codes//, or switches – early micro-projections of power and capacity. Genes contain knowledge in the (metaphorical) sense that basic information is embedded in them which enables effective action. And it’s not static; it changes and adapts between generations, so in a critical evolutionary sense it’s re-programmable.

We still need to deal with knowledge which is **//acquired//** at a social level. The question is, how do we make the leap to networks that are connected, but not physically contiguous, and certainly not physically continuous? And the answer is: semiotics, including a range of zoo-semiotics, which we will not deal with here, but which does lay the foundations for socio-semiotics, because it includes powerful affordances for //indication//, even if not for //predication// (see E. S. Reid's work in particular, in: //Language & Communication // (1995), vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 1–17).
 * Social Semiotics **

So, the next radical disjuncture, or dis-embedding is the digital coding of sounds into //phonemes// (the basic sound elements of speech: vowels and consonants), which are combined into the basic elements of language//, monemes//, like ‘ma’, to which we ascribe meaning within the social use of words. This is based on the arbitrary-and-conventional nature of this linguistic ‘double articulation’.

To carry the metaphor of embeddedness forward– in networks, machines, and networks of machines (and we will need to shift to //nodes// somewhere along the line, as the machine metaphor gets a bit clunky): The basic elements of language (words) are articulated into what for this exercise can be called ‘semiotic machines’, from indicative sentences to predicative sentences to more complex propositions to syllogisms to theorems to algorithms to texts and programmes to networks of programmes and so on.
 * Semiotic Machines **

There is another radical disjuncture, which is the disjuncture of ‘formalised’ knowledge, or ‘commodified’ knowledge, or ‘meta-semiotic’ knowledge. The terms are interchangeable. The point is that //formalised knowledge// is generated by stripping out the subject and context from semiotics, for the specific purpose of creating ‘tradable’ semiotic machines – which are, simply, semiotic algorithms that can in principle be transferred anywhere, and used by anyone, anywhere, and they constitute a general domain of [|meta-semiotics] //(//**Williams, R. T. (2005) //Meta-semiotics and practical epistemology.// Theory and Psychology, **pp. 441–52).

Positivist science, money, bureaucratic procedures, votes and ‘representatives’ in representative democracy (which might just be a subset of bureaucratic procedures), media texts, and, in line with networks / connectivism, the internet itself: the first //meta-network,// these are all examples of formalised knowledge in this sense.

This emerges alongside semiotics, and its development is inseparable from developments in semiotics and, later, meta-semiotics; machines in this sense are //meta-craft// devices, and programmes are //meta-machines.//
 * Knowledge Embedded in Machines **

Knowledge Embedded in Machines includes:

· Crafts, highly dependent on skills and energy embedded within, and sourced within, humans; · Industrial powered machines, where the skills / knowledge becomes disembedded and re-embedded in the machine, and the power is ‘outsourced’; · Factories which are systems of machines; programmed, re-programmable and smart machines and networks of machines, or networks of machines, programmes and networks themselves, in a network of nodes, which starts to resonate, conceptually, with the networks of nodes in humans, although there are still substantial differences in kind. · JIT manufacturing, retailing, and a range of e-commerce activities, such as mortgage derivatives (!) in the global networked economy.

Global networks, and global micro-networks (networks like the Connectivism course which are micro in size, but macro in reach) are where the human/ inanimate network in connectivism and in ANT comes into its own. What we have now is an (extraordinary) Web 2 iteration (Virtual Adaptive Networks, or VANs) of the CoP (or Complex Adaptive Networks – CANs) that humans and other primates have inhabited in the global ecology for some time.
 * Re-embedded in Networks **