One reason why it is difficult to find "networking gods" may lie in our mythic heritage. As I recall, a strong theme in Joseph Campbell's work was in the ascendency of Greco-Roman male-hero figures over earlier maternal mythical figures (I believe he refers to a "Mother Right"). The gist was that these more contemporary myths tended to portray the male heroes overcoming the female personas. The female figures in these myths tended to be re-cast rather negatively. The myth of Perseus and Medusa is a great example. In a nutshell, we find an underlying theme of (rational) man versus the irrational, chaotic forces of nature ("mother" nature). So, what I'm suggesting is that it will be easier to find "defenders" of networks rather than "builders" of networks. Builders such as Arachne are kind of marginalized carryovers from earlier days who get whacked by male heroes (in this case by Minerva, who is closer to the hero mold). BTW, my favorite of these hero versus chaos myths is Thor. He would use his famous hammer, boomerang-like, to regularly hold back the forces of chaos enveloping and closing in on our world. Is there some useful lesson in all this? I think so. Social networks are constructs in our minds. How we view them is how we view them. -- Richard Southwick ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Syracuse University [log in to unmask] School of Information Studies http://web.syr.edu/~rmsouthw 4-116 Center for Science and Technology Tel: 315.443.2911 Syracuse, NY 13244 Fax: 315.443.5806