Pragmatism, connectionism and the internet: A mind’s perfect storm

This paper explores that natural relationships between Pragmatic theory of knowing, the dynamic structuring of the mind and thinking suggested by connectionist theory, and the way information is distributed and organized through the world wide web (www). We suggest that these three “innovations” can be brought together to offer a better understanding of the way the human mind works. The internet and the information revolution may finally offer the opportunity to use and develop inductive learning practices and information based social inquiry in ways Pragmatic philosophers envisioned a hundred years ago, while the recent rise of connectionist and cognitive architecture works provides a concrete context for such developments. This confluence of process represents the type of synergy that only history can offer. The information revolution – exemplified by both the rise of connectionism and the internet – is the apotheosis of the Pragmatic revolution – bringing together radical empiricism and democratization of information in community practice. We offer three important realizations in our understanding of how information is organized and thinking progresses made possible by burgeoning virtual communities on the internet – open source thinking, scale-free networks, and interrelationships in the development of blogs to illustrate our thesis.