Week 1 Briefing: Credentials

The opening Briefing — what has to be true before anything under the soil counts as "a network," and the ground rules for keeping this course's central metaphor honest.

SLOP6674

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Rajarshi Rit · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Before the session#

Read the assigned primer on mycorrhizal structure. Bring one claim about “the wood wide web” you have picked up outside class — a documentary, a headline, a conversation. You are not defending it. You are putting it on the table.

In the session#

We build the credentials test together: for a plant-fungus pairing to earn the word “network” in this course, what has to be shown? Movement of carbon or nutrients, not just fungal presence. More than one host connected through a shared fungal individual, not just the same species growing nearby. Every later week’s diplomatic label has to clear this bar before it is allowed to sit on top of a real phenomenon.

Afterwards#

The test agreed here is the standing check for the rest of semester. Refer back to it before accepting any week’s metaphor at face value — including the convenor’s.