User:Takemori39

Below snow-capped peaks, Wind whispering through the woods, Warbler sings of spring. (竹森39, 2011)

A start
Spring, in the shadow of national sorrows, I begin my journey. Wikipedia rises like a range of forbidding mountains. As a hiker, I am used to being prepared, but here I feel overwhelmed. I have so much to learn. I am constantly demoralized by the endless Help entries - following more and more links until I am dizzy, and then wondering what it was I was looking for. Is there a Wikipedia for Dummies? I certainly feel one.

Making links
Following link after link can be as bewildering as it is edifying, but the convenience of these little marvels of internet architecture belies their vital importance to the emergence of the online environment as an autonomous, complex, and dynamical system. Without links, there would be only isolated pages. With links, a navigable and expanding infosphere comes into being.

Nagler, Levina and Timme (2011) suggest that links between agents (and these might be neurons, people, teams or internet pages) are made according to specific preferences. Within a competitive environment, individuals first prefer to link with other individuals, then small groups link up with small groups, larger networks form until all the elements of a system are connected. At first, the pace of linkage is slow, but in later stages, “A single new connection can dramatically enhance the size of a network – no matter whether this connection represents an additional link in the Internet, a new acquaintance within a circle of friends or a connection between two nerve cells in the brain”. Two links done and this is definitely slow going.

Towards self-organization
We are empowered by the knowledge and skills we possess and constrained by those we lack. Connecting ideas has consequences akin to linking pages – both begin the assemblage of a system of self-organization in which the parts (or agents) dynamically interact and create an environment which in turn acts upon its parts (Waldrop, 1992). . What emerges is a complex adaptive system (Holland, 1992) characterized by evolution, aggregate behaviour and anticipation. (And what emerges now - with four headings - is a Contents Box. Amazing!)