Summary of chapter 1

This chapter has presented an abstract mental model of a space that can contain any object, system or information. The locations of which are determined by the intersections of the parameters (dimensions) that describe them.

The parameters(dimensions) of this space can be chosen so as to limit the contents of the space to a particular class of objects, systems or information.

Parameters (dimensions) can be both tangible or intangible, allowing rules to be combined with physical aspects to locate objects, systems or information.

This abstract model does not specify any physical means of storage, location, selection or ordering - so it can be equally applied to computer systems such as the Google search engine or to neural systems such as the human brain.

A combination of key words and phrases point to specific information sources in the information space of the three billion web pages monitored by Google. In a similar way, external sensory inputs together with internal emotional and cognitive structures point to specific neural structures in the brain.

Just as search engine optimization specialists try to work out the details of the way in which search engine algorithms select and order information sources, psychologists and neuroscientists try to work out the details of the way in which the brain handles and prioritizes the information it has access to.