GenevaAldon, I am sorry if I misunderstood your posting (air-l 117, 118). I admit that I read the sentence: »If we work from a model of human knowledge and learning as being based on neural networks then any organization is a network of neural networks, an internetŠ« as if it meant that the function of the human mind in general was based on the neural network model and that all sorts of networks, the internet included, could be understood on the basis of this model. Now, I am not sure what it means. However, in your reply you make a similar analogy, saying that »neural networks ... provide a model for storing of information, just as RAID 5 arrays present a similar model for storing information«. As you describe these two models, they are in no way similar. In neural networks, »it is the network itself, and its connections that store the information and not the individual nodes« while in RAID »the information is spread across several different drives with some redundancy built in«. I suppose that it means that the information in the Raid model - contrary to the neural net-model - is actually stored in a number of distinct nodes. Lets take it a little further. When it comes to the storage of organisational information, we will always find that it is distributed and stored in much more complex ways than any of these two models, since information is both stored in computers (digital form), in printed texts and reports, eventually in videos, tapes and other traditional media, in the memories of many individuals, as explicit knowledge as well as in the form of tacit knowledge (Polanyi) etc.. Even the internet exist in a relationship with the whole matrix of available media, both when it comes to the social use of the internet in general and when it comes to the strategic use of the net within a specific organisation. There cannot be an organisation - not even a fordist or a leninist one - in which the information is not distributed in a number of different ways, in a variety of medias and minds, in a variety of semiotic codes and according to a number of different »models« of which we so far have only mentioned a few. In this respect I can follow Wilford Uncapher (air-l, 118) where he points to a number of aspects which seems of relevance for a theory of networks. The neural net and Raid models are to flat, they cannot present the whole array of complexity, e.g. the variety of heterogenous scales present in all organised communicational systems. They also lack a historical perspective. Distributed information is a constituent part of any sort of division of labor, whether »physical« or »intellectual«. It is not a new historical phenomenon, and if we want to identify new forms of distribution we can only do so if we are able to identify older forms. Finally, however, I agree that it is highly relevant to analyse the function(s) and various forms of redundancy used in all sorts of communication. This is not simply a matter of the amount of redundancy, a matter of more or less, it is also a - tricky - matter of functions and forms, not to say definitions. E.g. in Shannon's famous 1948-paper he employs at least three and maybe four different definitions of redundancy, though without making the differences explicit. (For those interested I have discussed his notions of redundancy and among other things shown that redundancy in various forms can be used both as a means of stabilisation and of (unexpected and perhaps uncontrolled) innovation of new forms and procedures. See the paper Redundancy and Codes, available as html or pdf at http://www.hum.au.dk/ckulturf/pages/publications/nof/redundancy.htm ) Maybe network organisations could be defined as organisations which are based more on redundancy than on regulations and rules, but anyway, all sorts of organisations in the whole history of mankind have been based both on rules and redundancy functions in one mixture or another. Finally, a comment concerning the assumed new network-organisation of Bin Laden, mentioned in various postings. Taking into account for instance the various national Resistence-movements in Europe during WWII, Viet Cong, ANC and other organisations in South Africa, Rote Arme Fraction, Brigada Rosso (Italy), ETA (Spain), IRA, The real IRA, The various Hizbollah groups, a list which could be continued with numerous guerilla-movements throughout the 20th century, I think the claim that a new kind of (terrorist) network organisation has emerged need to be substantially qualified. Niels Ole Finnemann PS excuse me the strange codes appearing in my former posting and perhaps also in this. *************************************************** Niels Ole Finnemann Lektor, dr. phil. Institut for Informations- og Medievidenskab Aarhus Universitet Niels Juelsgade 84 Tlf: 89 42 19 34 8200 Aarhus N Mail: finnemann@imv.au.dk http://www.imv.au.dk/medarbejdere/adresselisteekstern.html/finnemann/ Leder af Center for Internetforskning http://imv.au.dk/cfi/