Today I found a new friend who shares the avid interest in the underlying workings of the Internet. He is a doctor. We were talking about how diversity of inheritance makes us robust and contributes to longevity. He mentioned the word “heterozygous.” I did not know the word, but understood the meaning in the context of our conversation. I said that what he meant was why we have to feel sorry for Cheetahs, and he nodded.
Webster tells us that heterozygous refers to having the two alleles at corresponding loci on homologous chromosomes different for one or more loci.
A node on the Internet is much like a cell in biology. Like the cell, the node (such as a webpage, or any other item with a url) contains information that affects the other nodes to which it links. The quality of the information in the nodes has everything to do with how richly the nodes can link to other nodes to emerge robust patterns. A paucity of diversity among interacting cells weakens life — as it has done for the cheetahs.
Then Lo: Why not work toward heterozygous learn nodes for online education. Surely thinking itself is enriched by the heterozygosity of ideas. If this delightful word helps us think beyond doling out cookie-cutter ideas to our children, it is a mouthful worth chewing on.
But there is much more to the concept here. Having the variety of information labelled in cell biology as within alleles would correspond to varying patterns of knowledge among nodes on a subject for education. The synergy of the complexities sustains robustness in life and in learning that is stimulated by the mirroring of what is known by the Internet.
