Connection without absorption is the qualification that keeps the connection function from becoming its own failure. The goal is not everyone connected to everyone — that would be exhausting and homogenizing — but connection that leaves participants distinct:
People can collaborate without becoming identical; communities can interoperate without losing character; projects can share knowledge without merging.
This matters because differentiation is precisely what makes capacity worth spreading: a network that flattens its participants into sameness has more connectivity and less to propagate. It is one instance of a theme that recurs across the whole model — high differentiation with sufficient connectivity, neither fragmentation (differentiation without connection) nor homogenization (connection without difference) — and it is why the mutual constitution of participant and field does not mean dissolving the participant into the field. Connection raises the total capacity of the ecology by relating differences, not by erasing them. See How Capacity Spreads.