dearbaby: Nodes

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Nodes
This nOde last updated May 7th, 2003 and is permanently morphing...
(11 K'an (Corn) / 12 Uo - 24/260 - 12.19.10.4.4)

node

node (nod) noun
1.A knob, knot, protuberance, or swelling.
2.a. Botany. The point on a stem where a leaf is attached or has been attached; a joint.
3.Physics. A point or region of virtually zero amplitude in a periodic system.
4.Mathematics. The point at which a continuous curve crosses itself.
5.Computer Science. A terminal in a computer network.
6.Astronomy. a. Either of two diametrically opposite points at which the orbit of a planet intersects the ecliptic. b. Either of two points at which the orbit of a satellite intersects the orbital plane of a planet.

[Middle English, lump in the flesh, from Latin nodus, knot.]

Node

Node, a junction of some type. In computer science, on local area networks, a device that is connected to the network and is capable of communicating with other network devices.
In tree structures (used in database management and object-oriented programming), a location (set of information) on the tree that can have links to one or more nodes below it (child nodes). Some authors make a distinction between node and element, with an element being a given data type and a node comprising one or more elements as well as any supporting data structures (such as pointers).

node of Ranvier

node of Ranvier (nÖd ùv rän´vyA, rän-vyA´, räN-) noun
plural nodes of Ranvier
A constriction in the myelin sheath, occurring at varying intervals along the length of a nerve fiber.

[After Louis Antoine Ranvier (1835-1922), French histologist.]

Engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., successfully contacted UoSAT-12 spacecraft through a ground station in Surrey, England, using Internet ping packets. The project, called Operating Missions as Nodes on the Internet (OMNI), was the first time that a spacecraft ever had its own Internet address and was a fully RFC-compliant active node on the Internet.

The best tool for displaying and manipulating systems is the computer, which allows us to display a system and then observe it from any perspective. We can "navigate" the system, moving from one node to another, exploring the contents of each node and the essence of the links between nodes.

~~ John L. Petersen

In The Postmodern Condition, Jean-Francois Lyotard claims that "the self...is always located at 'nodal points' of specific communications circuits....No one, not even the least privileged among us, is ever entirely powerless over the messages that traverse and position him at the post of sender, addressee, or referent."

- Erik Davis

The World Is Bound With Secret Knots - The Museum Of Jurassic Technology

Any network has two ingredients: nodes and connections. In the grand network we are now assembling, the size of the nodes is collapsing while the quantity and quality of the connections are exploding. These two physical realms, the collapsing microcosm of silicon and the exploding telecosm of connections, form the matrix through which the new economy of ideas flows.

- Kevin Kelly - _New Rules For The New Economy_

This sense of secret sharing helps explain the growing desire to transcode the real, as when one signal source (Web traffic, a trumpet, the rate of rainforest loss) is translated into data that mutates into another form (3D models, machine rhythms, articulations of a robot arm). What exactly happens in these events? Are the patterns and affects suggested by such processes part of the world, or simply artifacts of the criteria of translation? This ancient problem–is the form in the world or the eye?–suspends itself in the new operations of the transcoding mix, which makes the phenomena it describes. The nodes around us–the nodes that we are–are not passive switches, but grow in strength and insight through their range of materials, the nature and novelty of their connections and mutual exchanges. Cosmic eros is not exhausted, and implosion may only be a media-induced hallucination of an emerging nest of integration.

Erik Davis - _Anchors Aweigh!_

track _Swamp_ MP3 by Node off of _Excursions In Ambience: The Fourth Frontier_ compilation CD
track _Nodes_ MP3 by Ilektro
ambient trip hop track _Node_ MP3 (vK) by Foreign Terrain off of _LP1_ CD on Soleilmoon Recordings #117 (2000)
release _Node_ by Node on Deviant (1995)