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Thursday we will discuss, Linked, read the whole book—it’s a good read—and leave your comments below. (Also remember that you should submit a working draft of your final project this week sometime.)
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The way Barabasi writes about the body as a network makes me nervous. He talks about science and theory as a way to understand the random order of the universe. His approach constantly assumes that there is some hidden map behind all the supposedly convoluted structures and complex systems in the world. A preference for order dominates his work. While “chance and randomness do play an important part” in the construction of networks, there is still an inherent ordering principle: “Real networks are self-organized” (221). But, to return to my original point, Barabasi talks about biology as the last frontier of mysteries ready to be conquered by the science of networks. This tendency is most striking in “The Map of Life” chapter.
In this chapter, he fantasizes about a future time when “the full biochemical network of the human cells will have been mapped out” (195). Then, technologies can be applied to the body for instant, accurate diagnosis of our ills. Mapping the “human cellular network” seems to be the ultimate accomplishment. Barabasi expresses his confidence in science: “I don’t believe this vision is far-fetched… It is only a simple interpolation of the tools already present. These advances are rooted in a fundamental shift in how we look at everything from life to disease. They are the result of seeing the cell as a whole — as a network” (196). Barabasi turns an instrumentalist, conquering eye onto the world (literally) as an external object to be mapped. The Human Genome Project “showed us what a small fraction of the vast world is really known to us and how much more is left to be explored” (196). This homocentric vantage point unnerves me, since it places man at the center of the universe and tries to solve all the mysteries of the world which are “external” from us. Even when the mysteries occur inside our own bodies, as in “The Map of Life” chapter, Barabasi’s metaphor of the “small world” (189) helps to objectify our own human cells and make them into territory to be explored and charted.
The story Barabasi tells is not ethical. It is not ethical according to Heidegger, who cautions against viewing the world as standing-reserve, or as resources external to man and fit for human use and abuse. It is not ethical according to Nichols, who tries to expose the “hidden agenda of mastery and control” inherent in looking at the human as a “metaphorical, automated, but intelligent system” (43). If everything is a network, the critical ethical question is who controls the network, and SHOULD someone control the network in the first place? Should all networks be seen as external phenomena to be charted and mastered? The examples posited in “The Map of Life” need further critique.
With all the talk of networks I found myself reading stuff I’ve heard before. The 80/20, small worlds and Rich Getting Richer are all things I’ve not only experienced through my participation in blogging or Twitter.
Something that Barabasi doesn’t address is what happens with too many connections and the idea of a information to noise ratio. Barabasi assumes that there can never be too many connections, even dismissing the idea that multitasking slows down processing ability by stating “Sleep or awake, our brain body juggle thousands of complicated tasks without signs of slowing down” (230).
Perhaps it isn’t a matter of slowing down, but wading through the influx of information that becomes a problem. Twitter is a great example of this. With too many connections Twitter doesn’t slow down but the information flow speeds up causing a loss in data simply because there is no way we can process it all. So, at what point do you balance the noise versus information?
The idea that everyone in the world is connected to one another is still quite hard for me to believe. This is only an assumption made by mathematicians and physicians who took a small sample of the world, and try to project it to a greater scale. I believe that mankind’s nature, is to always try and discover new things, and try to make sense of things. Mankind is a curious animal, and cannot stand the idea of not understanding things. When some one is trying to desperately look for an answer, eventually, he or she WILL find an answer that they were looking for. This is because they are not looking for the right answer, but looking for an answer that they had already constructed in their minds. Our brain for example, has the tendency to fill in the gaps and try to make sense of everything we feel, see, touch, and etc. Dotted words, or words that are cut in half, still can be read because of our nature of making sense of things. I think the research they conducted is admirable, but in vein. Just as there is no way to fully comprehend the network of our environment, there is no way to fully justify and understand how humans are linked from one another. We did not create the nature. Nature is not depended upon us. We are depended upon it instead. Just because you and I are people, it does not mean that we have control over other people. People born and die out of our control. I think it is impossible to understand something that is not in our power to manipulate.
In the introduction of “Linked” by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, he describes an incident in the year 2000 where a fifteen year old boy manages to successfully attack Yahoo’s computer system by employing many small computers to run a simple task and bombard Yahoo’s search engine. Barabasi asks the question “How vulnerable are we to such attacks”. In the year 2009 we are still asking the same question and every now and then you still hear about new malicious attacks on the web. Is this something we will always have to deal with? Attacks on web have the potential to affect businesses then in turn affect users all over the world.
Barabasi’s book is well written and describes how social networks can be used for good as well as how social networks can be used with malicious intent as in the example above. As the book’s title suggests, the author is talking about how everything is linked to everything else. People are connected by a complex network in society as they are on the internet. The first chapter is called “The Random Universe”, which made me start thinking about what really is or isn’t random in the universe.
Euler’s graph theory being the basis of today’s thinking of networks was interesting. I liked the quote on page 17 which asks do you “create mathematics or just discover it”. I think this saying could be related to everything in life. Do we create things or just discover them. The author’s explanation of hubs, nodes and connectors was great as they relate to social networks, yet are similar but work slightly different when referring to web pages on the internet.
Barabasi’s linked is very interesting to me because it cross several disciplines to make a point about complexity of social networks. Barabasi brilliantly recounts the social networks theory and history. I was amazed by the details of the stories of networks. He explains how physicist figured out the universe but we can not put it back together. I felt like the people who discovered the theories and ideas where brought to life as they related to his rough look at the whole.
After reading “Linked”, I am interested in the complexity and randomness of networks. Barabasi has great examples of how networks work socially and in nature. He describes the events that shape networks socially and in nature. How can humans be social by nature and be considered random in theory? The question comes from my inexperience with the subject of social networks.
Without Barabasi’s linked, I would not have been able to think of how randomness and complexity relating to social networks in such a short time. I look forward to reading this book several times.
Barabasi discusses a historical look at the complexity and randomness of networks. Erdos and Renyi introduced the study of graph theory. It appears that clusters or hubs are closed because the “connector” has a high influence on the fitness of the nodes. The connection of the Science Papers or the Erdos number has a high “fitness number” or if one applied “physics” to this cluster it may have a high level of “critical threshold”. Of the many concepts of networking, Barbasi discusses (which I feel needs exploration) “the weakest link” which seems to have power to activate or acquire abandon networks or connections.
Duncan Watts and Strogatz investigation of the connections within networks like the power grid led to the discovery of “clustering”. Their discovery has caused more investigations into the clustering of other ubiquitous networks.
Although Barabasi, discusses the evolution of the Aids virus through spread of one flight attendance seems to be the flaw in most of Barabasi’s discussion of networks. The Aids virus and the web are very complex networks.
Although Six Degrees of Separation is popular for discussion, the complexity of clusters and networks needs further investigation. Even Watts has published additional material stating the
“Influential’s” of the world have less power over network potential. Watts contend that the randomness of networks remains constant unless “critical mass” is breached. This is similar to the concept of “breaking the threshold” in Linked.
In Linked, Barabási outlines a way of understanding the universe (and various things within the universe) using networks:
“The mystery of life begins with the intricate web of interactions, integrating the millions of molecules within each organism. The enigma of the society starts with the convoluted structure of the social network… Therefore, networks are the prerequisite for describing any complex system, indicating that complexity theory must inevitably stand on the shoulders of network theory” (238).
This idea of networks works as a lens through which to view our surroundings. While this is interesting in itself as a theoretical paradigm, Barabási goes further than that. Throughout the text, the author demonstrates that this indeed is how the world works by dropping examples of how this occurs. For example, in the discussion of Karinthy, Barabási compares that story to the previous story of Erd?s:
“Almost two decades after Igy irtok ti, in 1929, at about the same time that the seventeen-year-old Erd?s was lecturing about the Pythagorean theorem in the shoe store a few streets away from the Central Café, Karinthy published his forty-sixth book…” (26).
The method of naturally illustrating the principles learned within the explanations themselves really helps support the author’s point, and makes the ideas far more convincing to the reader. There really are links between things in unlikely places! Some of the instances of this may seem a bit contrived, however.
I must confess that this was the least favorite reading of mine this semester. I found it extremely painful to finish the book. Barabasi is boring and repetitive in his exploration of network theory. The text is full of overly explained historical overviews and personal achievement stories, many of which should have been included in footnotes. In fact, I would have enjoyed reading his theories in a 20-page-paper rather than a 250-page-book with less lengthy stories.
Reading “Linked” I hardly ever found an Ah Ha moment, and instead was faced with lots of duh’s. “Connectors and hubs,” “80/20 rule,” “six-degrees-of-separation,” etc. have been well explored in other books (e.g. The tipping point) making it difficult to find relatively novice ideas in the book. Growing up with Google’s Page Ranking technology and Apple’s iTune’s monopoly, we all know and live with the fact that the rich gets richer and the winner takes all.
Barabasi frequently scares us from the power laws, and alerts us from our vulnerabilities toward network attacks but he doesn’t seem to offer any solutions. Throughout the book, he borrows from many different areas to explain and apply his network theories (and in fact network theories do apply to many areas such as politics, wealth distribution, molecule, internet), but he does so in a very one-sided manner: he never applies his theories to situations that won’t work!
In reading Linked, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (as does Barabasi). I don’t think I agree with the assessment that connectors are not a human characteristic. I think that characterizing a connector as simply a node is not fully realizing what all a connector is. While it is very interesting to see the connection and the network possibilities of humans, I think that the idea of a connector is not something that can simply be chalked up to natural causes, and can be explained away in that every network has them. I’d like to hear more about studies of other animal networks. Do these also have connectors or is this just a quick and easy reference that can be explained away with “they are a fundamental property of most networks.” (56) While it is fairly transparent to see their affect on the theory of the random network, I don’t think I buy that this is solely nature. That would imply that there would be no way to consciously become a connector, and that I very much disagree with.
I was particularly struck by the Fragmented Web chapter of Linked. Barabasi says “Sustien fears that by limiting access to conflicting viewpoints, the emerging online universe encourages segregation and social fragmentation. Indeed the mechanisms behind social and political isolation on the Web are self-reinforcing. “ (170) This is exactly what Nakamura speaks of regarding the marriage between power in the reality and power in the virtual. All boundaries drawn in reality are directly translated to the virtual. Barabasi goes to on to say “A side effect of our digital life is that our beliefs and affiliations are publicly available.” (170) I (and Nakamura) would say that reducing this to a “side effect” is a bit short sided. Couldn’t it be argued that one’s digital life is entirely comprised of a public display of a belief system and of affiliation? This is not Barabasi’s main gist, but it should be noted.
I’m not sure if the impact of this is something that Barabasi grasps, or is frankly interested in grasping. He believes that as long as individuals have the ultimate control over to what nodes to link, what hubs to use, and what direction is most suitable, the topology and navigability will remain intact. This is sort of the vibe I got throughout the book . . . Barabasi tends to have these little blips of interesting direction, but then leaves it to go back to the presenting his tale of how scaled the great mountain of network theory.
I find Mark Granovetter’s “strong and weak tie” model of social networks to be the most logical of all the network theories Barabasi touches on in Linked. In regards to networking to achieve a purpose, the connections one has with their acquaintances or “weak ties” are more important than those connections with their friends. This is exemplified by the effectiveness of professional networking sites such as LinkedIn. LinkedIn, as well as other social networking sites, function off the idea that connections can be made through people with whom you do not have close relationships with. Most opportunities arise from those whom you are merely acquainted with. Humans have considerably more acquaintances than friends, and therefore one’s acquaintances provide far more network opportunities.
One thing that captures my attention in the reading is the double usage of the word “link” when describing both human connections and a hyperlink on a webpage. This demonstrates how the Internet has revolutionized the way humans interact and form networks. In the context of the Internet, the word “link” serves as a metaphor for the connection between one entity and another, but it is also quite literally a “link” in the same sense that humans connect to each other. It is fascinating to me how the Internet has re-mastered human interaction and relationships.
“Linked” was one of the books that I can’t decide if I like it or not. Its concept is easy enough to understand, just like most business management/marketing books written to show people “yeah, making money is easy! Everyone can do it. Let me show you how!” by restating old concepts ten other books already talked about. At the same time, the authors are making money and the readers…most of them are not. This kind of books usually leaves me thinking about one same thing: the authors are really just good writers instead of pioneers in their professions. And that they are good at marketing themselves. Barabasi’s book gave me a similar feeling every now and then when I read it. The book was very well written. There are so many examples backing up the author’s points, some pushing it a little too far in my opinion. But the concepts that were taken from business books, although the purpose was to demonstrate his point, were a little obsolete to me. Those chapters were probably what prevent me from liking the book more than I do.
Although the book was full of the author’s own experiences working on the topic and ideas borrowed from other people, it did a very good job finding back-up stories from various fields. And it was interesting for me to see how differently writers with liberal arts and science write. Barabasi pretty much concentrated on throwing proof after proof to the readers in order to convince them that he was right. It was also interesting for me to find out how easily I change my mind. When he was explaining Erdos and Renyi’s theories, I agreed. Then when he said they were wrong because he and his graduate students found a new theory that supports what really happens better, I agreed too. The other thing about this book I noticed was that the author gave his statement by starting from the point of view of a culture that is in a developed country. And he did not really talk about the topic from the other direction. Although the book was really trying to examine the internet, I think the book would be more convincing if he could somehow prove that people are linked without so much concentration on science, math and internet.
As a few have pointed out, Barabasi opens with a story to prompt the question: How vulnerable are we? How vulnerable are our data systems? our aging power grid? our social systems? I think that though we haven’t quite untangled networks and slapped a set of operating rules that prove true to each, it is important to try to understand the nuances of each (from biological networks of the cell to worldwide social/economic networks – and Barabasi touches on each) in order to be able to control and even guard them against unwanted outside influences.
Barabasi also explained further the 80/20 theory and the “six degrees of separation” idea, exposing both the weaknesses and where the strengths lie. This was very helpful in a practical way… I had a general idea of what they were but am much more clear now.
I love how Barabasi takes time to go over failed attempts and weak theories used to analyze different networks, linking them to relevant, real-world stories; then takes the time to build up to how he sees the networks, instead. I do, however, think that some of his analyses would be easier to comprehend had I not left calculus in the dust after freshman year…
Great read so far.