How do you think?
Fire.
The billions of neurons in your brain fire trillions of times a second.
How do you think in Open Web Mind?
Same answer.
Fire.
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From an electrical and chemical point of view, the firing of a neuron in your brain is quite complicated.
There’s depolarization and repolarization, involving calcium, sodium, potassium and chloride ions, giving rise to resting potential, threshold potential and action potential.
But from a signal point of view, it’s simple.
Either a neuron fires, or it doesn’t.
If it fires, it communicates a signal to thousands of other neurons.
That’s it.
Open Web Mind doesn’t reproduce any of the electrical or chemical complexity of the neurons in your brain.
But it does capture that signal simplicity.
On fire
When you search for a concept in Open Web Mind, you set fire to the node representing that concept.
So when I search for Niger in the countries mind, I set fire to the node representing the country Niger.
But the fire doesn’t stop there.
In the countries mind, the node representing Niger is connected by edges to nodes representing other countries: countries that share a land border with Niger; countries whose capitals are close to Niger’s capital, Niamey.
So the fire I set to the node for Niger propagates to the nodes for its neighbours – Mali, Nigeria, Algeria, Chad, and so on.
The higher the rank of the edge between the node for Niger and the node for the other country, the more fire propagates to that node.
And the more fire in a node, the closer it appears to me, the thinker. In virtual reality, it’d appear closer in 3D, but on my flat screen, it just looks bigger.
Algeria, for example, is a much bigger country on the map than Burkino Faso; but the capital of Niger, Niamey, is much closer to the capital of Burkino Faso, Ougadougou, than it is to the capital of Algeria, Algiers; so the edge from Niger to Burkino Faso is ranked higher than the edge from Niger to Algeria; which means that the node for Burkino Faso appears closer to me, the thinker, than the node for Algeria; in other words, Burkino Faso looks bigger on the screen than Algeria.
It all comes down to fire.
When I search for Niger, I set fire to the node for Niger, and the fire propagates along edges from that node, more along high-ranked edges, less along low-ranked edges.
Playing with fire
There’s another way you can set fire to a node.
When you focus on a node in Open Web Mind, you set fire to that node, same as if you’d searched for it.
So when I click on the node representing Mali, the country to the west of Niger, I set fire to that node. In virtual reality, I’d need only look at the node, but on my laptop, I click.
Again, the fire doesn’t stop at the node for Mali.
It propagates to the nodes for Mali’s neighbours – Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, and so on – along the edges from the node for Mali, according to their rank.
And it doesn’t just propagate to these previously unfired nodes, representing the countries close to Mali, but not so close to Niger. It also propagates to previously fired nodes, representing the countries close to both Mali and Niger.
Take a look at the node for Burkino Faso, for example. It’s closer than ever – bigger than ever on my screen – closer, even, than Mali and Niger themselves. That’s because it’s nestled between Mali and Niger, its capital, Ouagadougou, close to both Niger’s capital, Niamey, and Mali’s capital, Bamako.
Again, it all comes down to fire.
The fire from the node for Niger, which I set by searching for it, has combined with the fire from the node for Mali, which I set by clicking on it, to set the fire for the node for Burkino Faso higher than either of the original nodes.
Burning the candle at both ends
I knew when I clicked on Mali that it was related to Niger: I could see that the two nodes were connected by an edge.
But what if I search for two concepts without knowing how, or even whether, they’re related?
If I search for Niger, setting fire to the node representing that country, then search for Sudan, setting fire to the node representing that country, I can get an idea of how these two countries are connected.
Now, the closest node – the biggest on my screen – is the node representing Chad. And that’s no surprise. If we look at the map, we can see that Chad is the country between Niger and Sudan, the geographical connection between those two countries on the globe.
How did Open Web Mind find this connection?
Once again, it all comes down to fire.
The fire I set to the node representing Niger propagated along edges to the nodes connected to Niger, including, of course, its next-door neighbour, Chad.
And the fire I set to the node representing Sudan propagated along edges to the nodes connected to Sudan, including, of course, its next-door neighbour, Chad.
Chad, as the common connection, finishes with more fire than either Niger or Sudan, even though I didn’t directly set that fire.
By setting fire to the nodes for Niger and Sudan, I find the concepts that connect the two countries.
Set the world on fire
What I’ve shown you is a mere hint of what you can do with fire in Open Web Mind.
I’ve limited myself to setting fire to just one or two nodes, nodes representing Niger, Mali and Sudan. What if I were to set fire to dozens of nodes?
I’ve limited myself to setting fire to closely-related nodes, nodes representing countries in same region of Africa. What if I were to set fire to more disparate nodes?
And I’ve limited myself to just one mind, the countries mind. What if I were to meld dozens of minds, minds holding my own knowledge, the articles I read, the podcasts I listen to, the channels I watch, the people I follow and the organizations I trust, not to mention the core minds that hold humanity’s essential knowledge?
What could fire in Open Web Mind do for me then?
You might as well ask what the firing of neurons in my brain does for me now.
