Language is a network
We are not tending language like a garden—its order is emerging from the chaos in a natural way.
When we thought of language like a book, we thought of it as an unruly mess of words that had to be kept in order, like a Victorian gardener constantly retrimming the hedges into spirals and globes. When we think of language like a network, we can see order as a thing that emerges out of the natural tendencies of the individuals, the way that a forest keeps itself in order even though it doesn’t get pruned and weeded. —Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet
- consequently: the internet is a rhizome, growing in every direction without beginning or end
- see also: rhizomatic thinking is non-hierarchal and relational, which helps us not think in hierarchies, binaries, and dualist categories
- see also: emergence occurs at a certain level of complexity