Everything is connected

I’m sitting here on a network– a network of roots connecting this tree to the soil. And in the soil, it is connected with fungi. Fungi also creating a network, connecting the trees. The fungi profit from the sugar offered by the trees. And in return, the fungi serve as a communication network between trees, even sending out alarms if one tree is being infected by bugs. Whatever network we look at, they’re all addressing the exchange of things between them. For example, when you look at this young apple tree, we realise that there’s a network of roots exchanging food and water with the soil.

And in the same vein, we see the branches and the leaves are here, exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide with the atmosphere. Networks are everywhere around us, even inside of us. For example, our brain is one large, neural network. If we look at the larger scale, we can even look at galaxies, like our own Milky Way. And the interesting thing is that galaxies, like the neurons in our brain, are connected in a kind of web. Isn’t that fascinating?

In this module, we will not focus on galaxies, or on the sky. No. We will focus on our own species, humans. And we want to explore what types of networks we have developed that are connecting us.