Social networking today is about mobility as evidenced by a world with six billion cellular phones. These and other Internet capable portable devices link us together across vast distances and inevitably go a long way to giving us a virtual sense of closeness. At first we had telegraph and telephone copper wires extending all over giving a physical presence to the network connections. Today the grid is dematerializing as it increasingly becomes wireless. The trajectory of the technology may soon have both the lines of connection and nodes of transmission and reception disappearing from view entirely. In parallel to this, the altar in the Tabernacle (Mishkan), as an instrument of obtaining and retaining close social-spiritual bonds with its network all around it, was also intended to be portable. To accomplish this, the four rings (mentioned in Shemot/Exodus 27:4) were affixed to it for the sake of inserting the poles (with which it was lifted and carried). The altar moved with the people and by means of the people. Its network (reshet) was made of a copper grating (interestingly nachoshet or “copper” has the sub-root chash in it which means ‘silence’ and which is also present in the modern Hebrew equivalent for electricity: chashmal). In other words, this mobile network is the ‘people’s network.’

Returning to the original verse which states (Shemot/Exodus 27:4) “….and upon the network (reshet) you will make four copper rings at its four edges” we can now inquire after the hidden significance of these rings. In Hebrew, the word for rings is tabaot which  comes from the same root as the word teva meaning ‘nature.’ The ring symbolizes some of the fundamental features of nature. In general, the geometry of the ring is a circle which brings to mind the idea of the cyclical in nature (repeating patterns of self similarity). Four rings would then be likened to a fourfold nature that is mounted upon the network. All of the dynamics of this network are carried (we all have to connect via a network ‘carrier’ today as well) by means of these four rings or interface modalities.

In his commentary on the above passage, Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac of Zidichov (1805-1873) in his work Likutei Maharya (p. 162a) associates the four rings ‘upon the network’ with the four letters of the Divine name (Yud-Hei-Vav-Hei). Each letter the would then be a distinct natural mode that makes the network (and the altar) move. Bringing all of this into a modern day context, we can look at the Internet as the greatest example of a network in world history.

The information created in the world (and largely ported through the Internet) was a staggering 1.8 zettabytes in 2011. In order to get a sense of the scale we have to imagine that a gigabyte is roughly equal to 10 meters of shelved books. One terabyte or 1000 gigabytes would store enough text that if printed out, would require the paper from 50,000 trees. A thousand terabytes would be a petabyte (200 petabytes would hold all printed material world wide). A thousand petabytes is an exabyte or around 50,000 years of HD video streaming continuously. According to Eric Schmidt at Google: “From the dawn of civilization until 2003, humankind generated five exabytes of data.” He goes on to say that “Right now, in the year 2010, the human race is generating five exabytes of information every two days. By the year 2013, the number will be five exabytes produced every ten minutes….” A 1000 exabytes jumps us up to the zettabyte level. If in all of 2011 1.8 zettabytes of information were thought of in terms of HD video, it would amount to 90,000,000 years of continuous playback. [A note on sources: most of these factoids are either spread on the web or in books such as Smolan and Erwitt’s The Human Face of Big Data (also a cool iPad app), Börner’s Atlas of Science: Visualizing What We Know, and Diamandis and Kotler’s Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think.] Needless to say, we are in the forecast flood of information (which, as we explained previously, is mentioned in the Zohar). Staying afloat within this flood makes our familiarity with the science of networks all the more critical.

So what are the prime movers of the Internet (which we will attempt to correspond to the  rings that attach to the network of the altar)? Since we said that they relate to the letters of the Tetragrammaton (Havayah which means “Being”) they have the status of naturally occurring information ontologies. To start, we will simply list them and then reflect upon each one in greater detail with the parallels to the letters of the Divine name put in play. The Internet has:

1. Domains (Websites).
2. Links (Hyperlinks)
3. Search
4. Programability

What are domains? When we think of the earth and landowning we understand the concept of territory. Owning a domain means that I am given mastery over it. I govern it.  You have your domain and I have mine. Whenever we enter into unsettled and ownerless land, we have to find a way to divide up the territory. Once divided we assign names to the various locations in order to tell them apart. Within the digital world, we merely transferred this same thinking. We purchase a Web Domain which entails having  a Domain Name plus Web Hosting for that Domain. Hosting a Domain is a ‘housing’ problem. Once we have a host we can build something within that Domain–namely a Website. Thus, the virtual earth of the World Wide Web its divided up into cyber states and digital zones.

Next we have to connect all of these disconnected Domains. If we were dealing with the real world of cities, towns and villages, the roads, bridges and waterways would function as the links. The dematerialized equivalent to wireless connections would be the paths of planes flying in the sky. Moreover, Domains without traffic remain poor. On some level the riches of a Website are dependent on the multitude of Links to other sites. We find that the Links grow the site and in a certain way characterize the type of site that it is. Moreover, these links are twofold: there are internal Links which connect the site within itself (in Web parlance this is referred to as the navigation on the site which situates all of the site content while allowing the user to move from page to page, picture to picture, video to video) and there are external Links which allow us to move from site to site. We have local roads in town and interstates.

Domains with all their Links are still not user friendly without Search. Today, it is difficult to remember life before Google. With billions of searches a day, artificial intelligence is placing more and more relevant information at our fingertips (that is–if it is not being retrieved via voice command). For those who perceive the true power of Search, they know it is more than just sorting and organizing existing content. The way in which we ask a question influences the type of answer we will get. On account of this, Search continuously synthesizes new information. Any aggregator has to apply some sort of rational judgement about the available content (how to prioritize that content, how to make it ‘mashable,’ how to formulate travel plans that will move us through the Links to the Sites). The larger matrix becomes revealed in the Search features which gives birth to the map and the landscape. It not only finds, it creates (something from something) by recombining the raw materials of the Web as it currently exists.

Finally, the Web is programmable. If it weren’t it would be static. The ability to continuously introduce new content onto the Web (with such simple examples as ‘posting’) and reconfigure the Web’s architecture on both a micro (website or webpage) and macro level (overall software applications of the entire Internet) is of paramount importance. Programability allows us to transform the reality of the Web and to constantly innovate. It can affect each of the first three modalities of Domains, Links, and Search and bring about change in all of them.

For Part Ten we will work our way through the four modes again and make explicit their correspondence with the four letters of the Tetragrammaton.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/the-power-of-networks-part-10/

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/the-power-of-networks-part-8/

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