{"id":1205,"date":"2008-10-28T15:54:18","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T15:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/embedding-history-within-the-rhizome\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T22:04:33","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T03:04:33","slug":"embedding-history-within-the-rhizome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/embedding-history-within-the-rhizome\/","title":{"rendered":"Embedding History within the Rhizome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For some time now, my buddy Dave has been sifting through notions of rhizomes in <a href=\"http:\/\/davecormier.com\/edblog\/category\/rhizomes\/\">his blog<\/a>, in a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/innovateonline.info\/?view=article&amp;id=550\">journal article<\/a>, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elearnspace.org\/blog\/archives\/003572.html\">colleagues<\/a>, and on various <a href=\"http:\/\/edtechtalk.com\/\">webcasts at EdTechTalk.com<\/a>. While he certainly isn&#8217;t the first to consider the concept or term &quot;rhizome&quot;, he has spent a good deal of time and effort extending the rhizome metaphor to knowledge creation and negotiation within the connected networks where we now learn, play, and work.<\/p>\n<p>Central to <i>my internalization<\/i> of his use of the rhizome metaphor is the conception of socially negotiated knowledge creation which is fostered and extended through and across vast connected networks. When people in the network connect with others, knowledge threads are shared, considered, negotiated, extended, modified, and spun back out into the network. These connections in the network offer a messy crisscross of knowledge threads and a magical never ending supply of shared &quot;aha&quot; moments. In my opinion, these messy connected knowledge threads and the socially negotiated &quot;aha&quot; moments are what make networks special and important.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8230; what are the implications when a <a href=\"http:\/\/digitaldisruptions.org\/rhizome\/\">knowledge thread is snapped off and begun anew<\/a> without a nod or historical connection to the thoughts and ideas that came before? It is certainly no longer messy when those historical threads and connections are lopped off. Instead, it projects to the uninitiated a fresh and novel perspective. However, doesn&#8217;t the network lose what makes it special and important when it fails to maintain and embrace its history and connections? Beyond the arguable violations of commonly held codes of attribution, what does the new knowledge thread and network lose by not embedding the history and past connections within the new social negotiations? Aren&#8217;t new participants mislead or shortchanged by losing the connection to past ideas and the historical evolution of the knowledge thread?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For some time now, my buddy Dave has been sifting through notions of rhizomes in his blog, in a recent journal article, with colleagues, and on various webcasts at EdTechTalk.com. While he certainly isn&#8217;t the first to consider the concept or term &quot;rhizome&quot;, he has spent a good deal of time and effort extending the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[194,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2951,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1205\/revisions\/2951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}