RSA ANIMATE: The Power of Networks 

This is the most amazing thing I have seen today!If you want to stay happy continue learning!

When I look at this and then think about our attempts to 'attribute' success in web analytics, I wince. Our shiny new toys are all clinging up at the tip of an iceberg of motivation.

this has got to be the greatest animation i've ever seen. it blows my mind.

Just discovering this now,but think its worth recirculating. A talk that explains and offers new understanding/insight surrounding people's difficulty in embrace the fuller impact of the web metaphor as it replaces the tree...similar to galileo expressing that earth not the center of the universe Manuel Lima makes a great case for loosening our attachment to centrality in favor of complexity

This is making me think about how out-dated our school system is.. everyone is learning the same thing, everyone needs "common knowledge".. for what? we need people to interact with specialities! - it is those who are highly specialised that comes out with the new ideas and features to our world, those who challenge their specialised knowledge with others' specialised knowledge!. Common knowledge is like the tree, everyone agree's with root and the log, but as you see in the video, everything connects! so be specialised, and share that specialised knowledge with others specialities, and you might just create something.. Not with everyone having the same knowledge and thereby agrees with one another. It might have gotten us to where we are, but we need a different strategy to reach further.. Atleast that is what I believe! :)

Exciting, creative, and important explanation of the current paradigm shift from the "Tree of Life" to the "Web of Life" taking place today. The word needs to get out about this, and become widely understood. Imagine how robustly we will all survive and thrive when we understand this!

Good presentation. It then means that communication is equivalent to networking and in a network, the person with the most connections has the most influence. Co-creation is emphasised, negotiation is continuous and productivity is higher.

The comparison at the end of the mouse's brain to the universe was absolutely incredible and so beautiful. Blew me away. Been waiting so long for another one of these, thank you!

LOVE this. Chaos and complexity theory are heavily involved in studying networks. We should be thinking in terms of these new structures as our technology accelerates. We are able to play with them and understand them more and more through our computer tech. I believe we are emerging out of the ancient "tree hierarchies" our ancestors have lived in since civilization began. Thanks for posting.

'To know a little bit about everything' - I think humanity is moving even beyond that. We know a lot about every area of knowledge or aspect of reality. Especially generations which grew up with a computer and internet.

"I think there's immense benefits that can come from this networked outlook of the world itself". Covers it quite well.

I am going to have to watch it a few more times to understand it all. Big thanks to RSA!

You're right to question the idea of universal structure, yet it is useful to look at patterns and structures across disciplines, even as we examine how the analogies break down, to further refine the way our mind and the field of science maps onto complex reality. Doing this visually as well as conceptually is great, I hope we can bridge between pure computer simulations of reality and these formats blending art and philosophy with science.

Quite interesting presentation of how life really is .... meanwhile, it makes God believers more impressed of the marvels of God's creation!!!

Most elegant. Exceptional execution. Simple, understandable, beautiful. Thank you.

Yes! This is the best way to visualize spoken information I have ever seen. It would be awesome if this were to be done for much more things!

so glad someone else has made that connection between the brain and the universe. I found the actual imaging of the drawn pictures, and noticed the similarities. I am excited that I am not the only one who has noticed this.:]

A tremendous amount of information crammed into such a short video. Will have to watch it over a few times It actually made me think about the intertwining of all of life forms, knowledge, history, science, technology etc., and now we have to power to pull it all together through modern technology. I feel that as far as understanding web science and the relationship between all entities and disciplines, we are only at the start of a very exciting and fruitful journey (The industrial revolution was only the start of a more organised society re means of production and the adapted life style)

Not just Relevant, but also fully descriptive!!!

First I thought it was about computer networks but this is more fascinating.

We watched those videos in my world history class. They are truly amazing!

Throughout life we rebuild and establish networks and connections in our brains in different ways so that eventually we consider things similar that have little similarity. For example, a Doctor would have a million items in a list of symptoms but to accurately diagnose, based on epidemiology, and other factors, such as details about their patients, they need to remodel knowledge and build a cognitive map that serves the ultimate purpose. This is our evolutionary advantage.

This is utterly fantastic. Well done Matthew Taylor and the RSA!

These videos rock. Extensive reading assignment: The web of Life - Fritjof Capra

"the need for a new way of thinking (...) we are almost going back to the renaissance man mentality; that is not about being specialist in one area, you need to know a little bit of everything (...) is really important that we actually make that mental shift" ❤

Can we forget our existence (trunk) in favor of our "being" (crown), in a connect/disconnect attitude? Is this human? Is our ability to interact with our eco and knowledge "crown", the key for difference among equals? Is knowing what to ask more important than the answer? I understand this is "just" a new way to represent knowledge... I'm just exploring... Congratulations Manuel!

I love this animation. So much knowledge packed into a short amount of time.

Thank you for sharing this visual primer on classification systems.

Recently I've read an interview with a biologist (sorry, can't give a link 'cos it's in Russian) who was explaining that the genetic code of any mammal is about 90% formed by the small parts of various bacteria's genetic code. He was explaining that the evolution is a process of setting network relations which is much more complicated than it was thought before.

I was a bit reticent to what the conclusion was gonna be. But it was great! Not only the similarity between the micro and macro giving, a evolutive perspective not always understood and accepted. And of course, in the real world, the true advantage that comes from knowing a little from everything or from many sciences. Not overwhelming but quite inspiring. Thanks again RSA and thanks Manuel Lima!

We've already got one! You can download our Android app here - thersa.org / iphone

I agree. Most religions are built on, or absorve, one or more philosophic principals or schools. That alone makes the study worth. Besides, the impact it have on our society and history is undeniable. Some people say religion is bad philosophy. I don't think I would put it like that myself, but I can see their point.

Education should no longer be about what I know but what WE know, and how we can use that knowledge to improve the world.

This is internet gold and the reason I subscribed!

The final state of the white board is amazing ! You could print posters :)

I'd say it's more a limit of human cognition. Our challenge as a species is to learn how to comprehend systems that don't easily map into our wet-ware. That takes more than just *illustrating* complex ideas, which intentionally simplifies reality to be comprehensible. The state of discourse on issues like climate change and terrorism reflect our addiction to over-simplifying an issue to understand it, and then forgetting it's just an illustration ... and solving the simplified version!

Excellent video: nicely entertaining, well paced, fun to watch and (most important) very informative. Thanks.

Best thing on the internet. Also, I'd love to have a panoramic print of this talk to hang on my wall. MAKE IT SO!

omg. this animation is too good! RSA plz put out more of these

Hi Olimario, Thanks very much for the compliment! Prints and PDFs of our RSA Animates can be purchased on the Cognitive Media website. - The CM Team

me enculo!! this is the BOMB, my mind is blown, thank you for giving me this piece of the puzzle! Great things will come soon...

Complexity made simple, love this.

Search for "Alan Watts - Web of Life". For full lecture, start with "Alan Watts - Web as Mutuality - (Web of Life Lecture Part 1)". He said this shit (and explored it more deeply) well over 50 years ago. Glad people like Manuel are finally catching on.

i have been lucky, because my teacher (sadly only one) aknowledges that this is more crucial information than most of what is told by other teachers. and i feel the same.

That has to be the biggest ad for basic income grant. Trust the networks - Instead of building hierarchys (and entrusting some people with power to prevent a misuse of power, that was given to people because of the misuse of power - and so on).

Everything is a network or a network of networks. Wow this blew my mind and made me think I cannot find a single thing I do or interact with that does not share network similarities - My neural network is overloading.

That was absolutely badass. Watching these videos is an amazing way to kickstart the brain in the morning before work :-)

I found an article on Scientific American by Melinda Wenner titled "Humans Carry More Bacterial Cells than Human Ones" that explains it fairly well. Basically, saying that the human body is "made" of bacteria seems a tad misleading. Rather, the human body contains 10 times more bacterial cells than our own human cells. These bacterial cells exist in a symbiotic relationship with our body, but our bodies are not "made" of them.

Very beautiful, but what I enjoy most, is seeing the process of it being drawn, which has significantly decreased over time.

Its bit fast, but considering he condensed knowledge from milleniums to current day in 9mt is quite commendable, a brain tickler. Summarising that we are in beginning of a new era, the network thinking-a bit of everything,not specialists is my take away message..Very good animation,brilliantly conceived &presented

i really appreciate the work you put into this video presentation. the clip is even suggested for a module i have in systems thinking

Highly inspirational and motivational, thank you Manuel!

Brilliant! It has helped me immeasurably to present views, which I have always instinctively known to be true, in a far more articulate and structured manner. Thank you!

I had been waiting far too long for this and it delivered.

@omfg4all: Excellent comment. The emporer, or network architects, wears no clothes. Staffor Beer warned us as far as 1973 in his book “Designing Freedom” (or Tyranny) that computers could be gravely misused. Instead of using the computer’s capabilities to amplify control variety or attenuate incoming variety, computers could be used to proliferate the systems variety, therefore rendering impossible any form of individual human control.

it will be great that this can be published as poster

The synthesis of trees and networks have been formalized in mathematics in bigraph theory! Check out Robin Milner's "The Space and Motion of Communicating Agents" for the exploration of that space!

wow, amazing. while watcing this video it came up to me that rsa helps in all videos by teaching some sort of spacial cognition with the drawings, very interesting, we get smarter in that way too while watching rsa. our brains learn how to draw space and experience designed thinking.

I know it's fun and I started to read up on it but not much 'till now. Well, thanks for your time. I guess, pi and e do contain a good deal more information than perfect randomness, while still being potentially normal (not yet known, obviously), so yeah, that's probably the answer. Strings that define, for instance, transcendental (or maybe irrational is already strong enough) numbers.

Totally Relevant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cos we always ask for the whole board after the video, they actually showed it this time = D Thanks

James Burke proved all this stuff on his Connections TV show in 1978 how things are interconnected and similarities.

Wow what a great experience.

Excellent animation, a great learning tool!

It's as if we're confined to world of degrees between two extremes, which themselves are merely degrees. Each world between the two extremes of two degrees, like the many world's interpretation, are relative in spatial dimensions to themselves: an infinite number of worlds, an infinite number of degrees, an infinite number of extremes.

This is pretty much old news. There is some great work done by Ken Wilber on the Integral perspective. Ref: "A Brief History of Everything"

Defiantly tunes me in more with the artwork animation!

finally another animate!

There are (at least) two basic theorems anyone who talks about complexity should be aware of: any unstructured logical schema can be represented by a structured one and any tree can be represented as a binary tree. What matters is how one represents in a computer that network - and the author should learn to design and manage databases, and should master concepts such as the adjacency matrix, and all basic structures. References: Fundamentals of Data Structures Hardcover - June 1, 1983 by Ellis Horowitz (Author) , Sartaj Sahni - a classical book that any physicist should read. Concepts are great, and that of complexity is not new; the challenge is to manage these notions in applications. And so far all that beautiful theory hasn't gotten an inch away from Horrowitz and Sahni's book when it comes to applications. Good luck with complexity- I vote for a theory of simplicity as I believe in Einstein;s words: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler".

I want to propose to some of my teachers playing this type of videos during classes

Warren Weaver's article was actually named "Science and Complexity", if you are interested.

I wouldn't be surprised if this animator was the architect of my dreams.

nice video.... we are quantum observers of the universe and ourselves It reminds me of the song by the Beatles Within and without you ....

Yes, this is why I subscribed!

Perfect, as usual

this is simple and easy to understand.

I love your videos! Thank you for sharing! They are awesome.

I want that finished poster so much!

This video is so brilliant!

truly impressive.

those drawings are just awesome ;) best ones ive seen from RSA for some reason :)

Fucking awesome RSA. Great talk, and one of the best animates too cogmedia, good job.

A very important perspective. Thank you.

Really liked this video, different from what teachers have taught me at school

Absolutely inspiring!

I absolutely love these.

Great topic. The idea of networks (rhizome) vs trees (hierarchy) is a true shift of the whole paradigm. Right now we are facing the huge change in social practices that can be explained only through this idea. Though there is some Marxist (or to some degree Hegelian) dialectics in that ;)

I think a network based on technology is determined by wires. Web life is based on open communications with no wires. {Maturana-Varela (The Tree of Knowledge) conceives an ongoing conversation, or ongoing coordination of actions. Conversation is a meshing of language and mood or emotion}

Excellent video.

i agree i havent seen an animate in so long!

It would be really nice to be able to download the final image and/or buy a poster of it!

Thanks dude.

So... are you telling me that knowing something from a bunch of things actually makes me intelligent? Finally! My mother will have to recognize that i haven been wasting my time on the Internetz... i'v been studying!

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the flower of life is a great afterpiece to this video :D

Yea i always link different things from what i learnt and that is the easiest way i create new ideas... Try it yourself! Watch something about space, economics then animal kingdom all continuously.

Excellent overall, and very clever animation. My only critical comment: take a look at who is represented in all the "people" in the drawings - almost all (white) men. I think a re-make might take that into consideration. thank you.

I so appreciate this! great Job guys

I love the presentation.

Very strange - if also encouraging - to see other fields and even popularizers finally catch up with Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomic theory of knowledge.