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The next sub-section challenges this holistic approach since it begins to argue that one of thepedagogical agents from whom professional learning can be derived is the disembodied machinethat connects to other disembodied machines through the utterly material architecture ofcomputerised networks.NetworkPostulation of the phenomenon ‘network’, for the emerging theoretical framework, derives frommy observation that human beings learn technologies best when they can share their learningwith others, have access to good models or can ‘play’ with equipment or software in ‘safe’ and‘comfortable’ settings. Crucially, learning appears to occur when there is an 'agent'. In each ofthe appendices 1-6, I recall how a person, a teacher, a tutor, even a piece of carefully writtentechnologised training material contributed to profound learning experiences in my case.Humans may learn well from peers, as I observed in the very earliest days of my unconsciousparticipation in this process (appendices 2 and 3) or perhaps, for the first time in the history ofhumanity, directly from machines. Described more fully in section 2.3.3, ‘network’ is describedas how, ‘the self actively participates technologically in the social co-construction of meaningthrough focused and relevant communities of practical or professional enquiry’ (after Wenger,1998; 2001 – see Smith, 2003). It is to be acknowledged here that ‘network’, in keeping withmodern technological discourse is both noun and verb. The notion of a rhizomic network ismore fully discussed in reflections on my time in New Zealand (appendices 1 and 4 and insection 4.3.3). Learning about it was mediated by the words and works of Polsani (2002, 1 and2); he was my pedagogical agent.80Simon Hughes Ph.D. Thesis (October 2012)