Our Story and Philosophy
InfraNodus is a tool designed to foster ecological thinking through cognitive variability and network heuristics. Our objective is to develop tools, methodologies, and frameworks that enhance cognitive adaptability and diversity, helping to counteract rigid thought patterns and broaden perception.
Today, totalitarian tendencies in society are becoming increasingly pronounced, driven by the rise of social media, echo chambers, and growing polarization. Much of the world’s tension seems to stem from two opposing yet equally problematic ideas: the belief in a single absolute truth (authoritarian thinking, violent ideologies) and the notion that truth does not exist at all (cynicism and indifference, the era of post-truth). At the same time, our understanding of cognition and language is evolving. Contemporary technology offers powerful tools and approaches to enhance and expand our thinking processes. We believe technology can play a crucial role in helping culture evolve beyond these negative tendencies.
Our vision for InfraNodus is to contribute to this transformation—to cultivate a world where multiple truths coexist, where plurality of thought flourishes, and where perception and action embrace polysingularity. We see the rhizome as a powerful metaphor for this way of thinking, which is why we place a strong emphasis on text network analysis and knowledge graphs as interfaces to bring this vision to life.
At the same time, we reject the prevailing narratives of relentless growth, efficiency, and disruption that dominate today's tech culture. Too often, "disruption" simply replaces old power structures with new players, without addressing underlying inequalities. Likewise, the pursuit of efficiency often comes at the expense of complexity and ecosystems, prioritizing short-term gains over sustainable, long-term development. Instead, we advocate for exploration over disruption and curiosity over efficiency.
Our approach is not aimed at making your work more efficient—while that may be a side effect, it is not our goal. Nor do we seek to disrupt; rather, we strive to explore possibilities and unravel the world in all its polysingularity. We want InfraNodus to help you see what everyone else is missing; to give visibility to the gaps and periphery, to foster a more open and inclusive thinking process. We do not believe in balance but in transient non-equilibrium stabilities—patterns of states that are continuously formed and reformed, generating ever-evolving versions of reality.
We firmly believe that the tools we use and the languages we speak shape us and influence the way we think. By learning new tools and languages, we can expand our thinking and enhance our cognitive abilities. Network science enables us to uncover the complex, dynamic relationships underlying various processes. Ecological thinking helps us see things as interconnected systems, never isolated from their environment. Meanwhile, modern NLP and AI tools can amplify our perception, allowing us to navigate and engage with an ever-expanding body of knowledge.
InfraNodus History
InfraNodus did not start as a business but rather as an artistic and research project with its roots in an online associative thinking tool, ThisIsLike, created in 2007. It has undergone through several stages of development, becoming a company in 2023.
2007-2012: Preliminary research
The first iteration of InfraNodus was created by Dmitry Paranyushkin in 2007 as ThisIsLike — a tool for associative thinking. Using ThisIsLike, users could find places, writers, philosophers, artists that were like each other. At that moment, Dmitry was fascinated about networks because of Noguchi Taiso and Butoh Dance body practices that he was learning with Imre Thormann. At the same time, he was in constant correspondence with his father, Vladimir Paranyushkin, who used to be a nuclear scientist and who got Dmitry inspired about dynamical systems theory, science, and taught him programming when he was 11.
ThisIsLike went through a few iterations and got transformed into Textexture in 2012 as part of his work at Nodus Labs. You can still visit the old Textexture website, which was basically a version of ThisIsLike for concepts and ideas. This transition from ThisIsLike to Textexture was pretty interesting. ThisIsLike actually started as a travel guide, linking places around the world together ("if you like this museum in Paris, you'll also like that museum in New York"). However, gradually it became clear that you could also link places to people (philosophers, writers, artists), concepts, ideas, and the associative networks became more and more granular. At the same time, Dmitry was really fascinated with the aesthetics of text visualizations: if we abstracted an image, we could see a text as a sculpture. Visualizing different kinds of texts produced different images: highly interconnected ideologically loaded texts seemed to have a very centralized visual structure, while poetry was dispersed (below you see an example of Leo Tolstoy's prose created using this abstract visualization approach).
During 2008-2011, Dmitry developed the concept of Polysingularity — the ability to see things from multiple perspectives and have access to several positions at once while also maintaining a specific point of view. The interest was both in practical and aesthetic implications of this approach. To develop this concept, a research lab — Nodus Labs — was established, exploring the practical and theoretical applications of network science in educational and social contexts.
2014: The first free open-source prototype of InfraNodus is online
While Polysingularity was more of a philosophical and artistic concept, Nodus Labs provided a platform to explore it from a scientific perspective and to develop practical tools that could help advance this approach in everyday life. To promote this work, the first version of InfraNodus was published by Dmitry Paranyushkin and Nodus Labs in 2014 as an open-source Node.Js repo running on Neo4J graph database. During this time, Dmitry collaborated with Dor Garbash and Alexis Jacomy, who he also worked together with in 2009 on ThisIsLike. Alexis developed a beautiful network visualization module, Sigma.Js, which is still used in InfraNodus today. Alexis' brother, Matthieu Jacomy, as well as the team of Gephi (an open source network analysis platform) developed many of the graph algorithms that inspired this first iteration of InfraNodus. Fun fact: one of the first implementations that Alexis used was inspired by the interfaces in the science fiction film "Minority Report". Another instance of fiction becoming reality.
From 2012 to 2018, while being a part of Nodus Labs, Dmitry conducted artistic and scientific research into network science and dynamical systems theory, presenting his work in multiple venues and conferences around the world. He was also interested in how this approach can be used for the body and physical movement and together with Kirikoo Des (also known as NSDOS) created EightOS Body-Mind Operating System project in 2016. Many of the ideas implemented in InfraNodus later derive from this artistic research. In fact, InfraNodus got a fresh start when Kirikoo Des approached Dmitry asking him if the interactive network visualization inside the tool could be used as a musical instrument. Together, they worked on an audio-visual implementation of InfraNodus, where it could be used as a midi instrument in live performances. So, perhaps, InfraNodus would not be possible without a certain fascination about art and music.
2018: From art to science
Active development of InfraNodus started in 2018 when the second version of InfraNodus was released. Since then, this artistic and scientific research project started to transform into a commercial tool. Many technologies developed at Nodus Labs have been utilized in InfraNodus under a free licensing agreement with Ways Ltd, supporting InfraNodus' efforts to promote this new approach to a wider audience.
2021: Technical upgrade
In 2021-2022, Nodus Labs, with the help of Oleg Yarin, developed the underlying InfraSonic algorithm (an upgrade to the previous Textexture algorithm) that formed the new text analysis backend. The core idea was to switch from a Neo4J graph database to a standard PostgreSQL one and create a robust backend text analysis API on the basis of Next.Js and Textexture algorithms. It enabled to make the text analysis module faster and more resilient. To finance this work, InfraNodus began collecting subscription payments on behalf Nodus Labs under an exclusive agent agreement that helped finance both the software development work done by Nodus Labs and the promotion and popularization efforts by InfraNodus. Nodus Labs also removed the open-source version of InfraNodus because no one was contributing to the code, focusing on its own development efforts.
2023: API, application plugins, AR/VR, and AI R&D efforts
From 2023, InfraNodus was formed as a company in Paris, France (InfraNodus SAS) and is actively growing the audience and the team since then. We are focused on enhancing user experience, making the tool easier to use, and exploring new approaches to ecological thinking. In the meanwhile, using the licensing fees from InfraNodus' subscriptions for the underlying backend software InfraSonic, Nodus Labs is continuing its R&D work developing new more efficient text analysis and AI algorithms, API, 3D AR/VR modules, and external application plugins. InfraNodus is what we call "organic software" — it is developed without venture capital and is fully funded by users and licensing partners (who we thank greatly for giving us an opportunity to develop this product and research). We believe this is a working model for R&D and software development and we are into this for the long-term.
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Started as an artistic and research project, InfraNodus is now used by thousands of researchers and thinkers worldwide. It is fascinating to see how some of the concepts that seemed like science fiction 10 years ago are now being used on a regular basis by people around the world to augment their research workflows and to enhance their thinking, writing, and reading.
The InfraNodus Approach
The InfraNodus approach is based on ecological network thinking, which encourages variable dynamics in cognitive process. Using the different workflows and analytical tools built into our tool, we propose methodology that alternates between scales (high-level ideas vs. underlying concepts) and intent (focus vs. exploration).
We see thinking as a dynamic non-equilrium process that goes through the different stages: growth of an idea, saturation, optimization, and reorganization. We represent these stages using the metrics derived from network science and dynamical systems theory and provide this feedback to the user, so they can adjust their heuristics accordingly, based on their objectives and interests.
If you would like to learn more about our approach, please, read the article on our research framework and a brief expalanation of how Infranodus works.
If you are interested to dig deeper into the philosophical and scientific concepts behind InfraNodus, please, check the articles on ecological thinking and cognitive variability.
We really like to hear back from you, so in case some of the ideas resonate, please, feel free to write to us and share what you're thinking about. The best way to reach us is via the support portal or one of our social network accounts: @noduslabs on Twitter, InfraNodus subreddit, or our discord.
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