Networks
Underground
OK - what do brains, the internet, slime molds, forests, and mushrooms have in common?
They are all self organizing networks.
I'm reading Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake - it's about fungi mostly. It talks about how fungi are actually networks of mycelia; long fibres of cells with a growing tip. The tip can fork into two new fibres - all connected to the base. These fibres can merge as well as split.
I first learned about mycelium long ago from a friend who was trying to grow magic mushrooms; it was hard to do.
But it was strange; she had to encourage the mycelium to grow when it was just a fuzz underground.
If conditions were just right that fuzz would produce a 'fruiting body' we call a mushroom.
Literally over night.
But the mushroom was just the mycelium network reconfigured.
Mycelium can explore.
Think about that - exploratory mushrooms.
The way it works is like this; Imagine you have a fungus feeding on a block of rotting wood.
As well as mycelia growing into the wood and digesting it you get mycelia that propagate away from the wood in a radial pattern.
If another block of wood is encountered by any of those propagating mycelia then all of a sudden the behavior of the whole changes
The radial propagation stops and propagation along the line that leads to the other block increases.
OK - that alone leaves me a bit gobsmacked. How could one thread of mycelium be affected by what another thread encounters? That a good question and a work in progress; many methods are proposed. This is a short essay and I can't get into the details. But think how close this is to cognition; mycelium can decide to focus its energy here rather than there after it makes a discovery.
This can be used to make 'computers'. Mycelium can find the shortest route out of a maze faster than you can (read the book for the setup :-)
Sheldrake talks about how mycelium spreading across a forest floor amounts to a 'wood wide web' that enables all the plants to exchange information and even resources.
As well as a symbiotic relationship where the mycelia provide things the plants need and the plants provide things the mycelia needs - not just information - transfer and creation of nutrients too.
Turns out that the mycelia communicates in ways we may be able to detect and interpret.
There is diffusion of chemicals (slow) but also pressure differentials and electrical action potentials fast.
Our neurons work with those action potentials
Sheldrake holds out the possibility that if we learn to interpret those signals then fungi might be used as a huge and very sensitive way of monitoring the environment.
I'm interested in how networks hold such huge potential. Not living or aware but able to interact over distances. We have all sorts of networks we are enmeshed in - from our circle of friends to the way our neurons interact. And we think we are in control:-)
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.