Information networks and systemic properties. An epistemological perspective [Redes de información y propiedades sistémicas. Una perspectiva epistemológica]
Description
In this article I present a proposal for a new epistemic paradigm for the interpretation of complex reticular phenomena: the information network.
Starting from an analysis of the concept of network in different contexts, such as in the case of an artificial neuronal network, the signal network of a swarm intelligence or the synaptic network in the brain, the present work has the ambition to identify the common features of all this kinds of net and to start delineating a general epistemic paradigm.
The strongest idea of this essay is that most important thing in a net in not its architecture, but the information content it conveys: any information is here presented as a set of signs, hence, any information network constitutes a semiotic system (which is particularly evident in a swarm intelligence).
The nodes of a net can be seen as the agents of a system: each agent locally manipulates signs, modifying in this way its environment (the very semiotic system it belongs to, the information network). Therefore, I argue that the very information structure influences local responses of the individual agents, feedbacks the system and self-organize.
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