CONCEPT
Meshwork (Ingold)
Ingold's alternative to the network — a tangle of interwoven lines of movement and growth in which the primary reality is the lines themselves, and what look like nodes are only knots where lines happen to cross.
The network model treats the universe as a set of discrete entities connected by relationships — atoms connected by bonds, neurons connected by synapses, people connected by ties. The nodes are primary; the connections are secondary. Intelligence, on this view, is a property of the connections: the more of them, the denser the network, the richer the intelligence. Ingold inverts the priority. In the meshwork, there are no nodes — only lines of movement, growth, becoming. What appear to be nodes are temporary tangles where multiple lines cross and continue. A person is not a node in a social network; a person is a knot — a convergence of lines of ancestry, experience, relationship, memory, practice, all in motion, all entangled with other lines. The distinction reframes what AI is. In the network model, AI is a new node that increases the network's density. In the meshwork model, AI is a new thread whose interweaving alters
the pattern of