Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness
Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks.

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Friday, February 21, 2003

Fast ramp to getting to know people? My friend Ron sent me an article by David Pogue, People Rating on the Web? It is a little creepy to ponder what a set of XML tags for the ontology of interpersonal relationships would look like, so that you could slip ratings of people into the web with a tag like:

   <personal-rating 

     attributes="sharp dresser-warped mind">

     Random Andom

     </personal-rating>

To use Pogue's example. Or what about:

   <personal-rating knowledge="complexity, social networks, geothermal physics">

     Random Andom

     </personal-rating>

Or maybe we should just be able to indicate that we know someone, so others can email or IM to get the scoop?

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Sunday, February 16, 2003

Inf@Vis! From the com-prac network, a link to a great newsletter on the Visualizing Social Interaction, at InfoVis.net. I was reminded about how important this was on a recent phone session for CPsquare. When people whose names you haven't heard before introduce themselves on the phone, even when the introductions are managed geographically, it is very hard to sense the spaces occupied by these people, not to mention that it's very hard to catch the names and affiliations.

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Saturday, February 15, 2003

UN Petition. I received a UN petition against the war in Iraq and forwarded to my friend Adele. She sent a note to me and a niece of hers, that she received the same petition from both of us, but that the one she received from me had more names on it. I compared the lists. At position #188, a gentleman in Pamplona forwarded the message to a woman in New York City and also to another friend in Gadalko, Spain. From New York City, the message reached Adele in 6 steps. From Spain, it took an additional 283 stops in locations in Chile, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Greece, and Tortoloa before getting into my social network, and then to Adele.

This same petition, with the same original starting name, is archived in hundreds of email lists on the web, where it can be found, translated into many of these different languages. This looks like an interesting social network research project for someone!

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Wednesday, February 12, 2003

Duncan Watts (see entry for 1/25) gave a talk at the MIT Media Lab today. I wasn't able to get into Cambridge to see it, but it was simulcast on the web (the webcast failed 45 minutes into the presentation, but that was not bad). Called, "Six Degrees: Science of the Connected Age," it was a good history of social network study "and a background on the mathematics involved.

A real point to ponder. The mathematics demonstrate this Small World Fact: regardless of size of a random network, roughly five random shortcuts reduce the average path length by a factor of 1/2. This would mean that in a big organization, if the average separation among employees is something like 6, then if you introduce five people at random to others (presumably others that they do not know), then the number of degrees of separation will fall to roughly 3. Hm.

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patti anklam. How to make networks work.

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