My idea amounts to "plant metaphor", so let me plant a seed in you.

Plant root systems are brilliantly economical. They balance the risk of exploration for new investment with the known value of tried practices and stored resources. They appropriate resources from other parts of the plant when necessary. The sacrifice resources for the greater good of the plant. They let atrophy those parts that do not work. They contribute their local community. They diversify and stabilize, preparing for catastrophic events. They save for the lean years. They probe new areas of the local soil, investing locally. They commit to this soil, but they also jump out of the soil and run to distant areas, creating economic entanglement in the ecosystem.

These are processes that go on in this building. In each of these rooms is a set of ideas. Each idea is an opportunity to invest. Our ideas are being invested in. We experience this investment now. That the lights are on, that we have internet connectivity, that we can come and go from this room, that this room exists are all manifestations of some organism's investments in the ideas here. That investment can stop and we can wither on the vine, so let's think of something.

Plants generally have a part you see (flower/leaf/stem) and a part you don't see (the roots). Both are critical to the life of the plant. Each has a different purpose, but they are both part of one living thing.

I worked on a root-system growth animator last year. I read a bunch of papers on botany and root systems. When modeling root growth one uses a soil model. This model is a 3 dimensional grid where each portion of the grid has some unique set of nutrients and material composition. Roots explore the grid, grabbing nutrients from the soil that work for the plant. This building is like the soil. This room is like a cell in the soil grid. We create the plant. We build a root system (by collecting data). The Wall is the flower (what people see). The roof is the leaf (collecting energy and taking nutrients from the air). And there is already a stem in place.

The human in this metaphorical framework is a ravenous consumer and prolific producer of data. As a human moves by the wall, the flower, it eats the flower, swollowing a seed, the embrionic copy of the CNSI/Elings plant, processing the ideas contained therein. The human carries the seed away, planting it elsewhere (conversations, papers, songs, blogs, texts, etc). The human also serves to damage, augment or otherwise mutate the plant.

I want to build a metaphorical plant to represent and occupy CNSI/Elings. The first step is to put down a radicle, to take root. To "take root" is to start collecting data.