Hi, enjoyable!

The cycle back to Socrates after Plato is fascinating, makes me wonder what other deep cycles we might be in - returning to what other forms of early, evolutionary wisdom?

My attention caught on slides 19-21, where the image stays the same but cool words get attached to the last image: democracy, value networks, collaboration..... I'm not sure if the mere presence of connections constitutes those forms of social relations? Sure, some kind of activity is occurring among the nodes (presumedly between the persons that the nodes represent), but I don't know if we can assume that the interaction is necessarily of any particular character.

Do you know what I mean? I'm thinking of this because I was asked the following question by @valdiskrebs on twitter during the recent Science of Team Science conference:

"@stephjoke email flow shows interaction between individuals and groups... is that "collaboration"? If no, then what 2 map? #teamsci10

I'm not sure we can call the fact of being able to map some kind of flow (via email or any other means) "collaboration" or anything else without knowing something of content of the emails, and of the process within which the email content is embedded. At most we can say, some kind of activity is occurring, but what type - and especially of what quality - is another matter.

Isn't it?

best,
steph