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.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

In a nice postscript to Wednesday's post, I read David Weinberger's column in this month's issue of KMWorld. His thoughts on complexity spring from a comment by Vincent ("father of the Internet") Cerf in Esquire Magazine:

The closer you look at something, the more complex it seems to be.

Contrasting the emerging acceptance of complexity as our world view (pun intended) with that of classical Greece's fondess of the simplicity of logic, he makes the observation that we need to look at simplicity differently: complex events are generated by a host of extremely simple interactions.

Dave points out that as a father of the Internet, Cerf was instrumental in providing us with technology that make it possible for us to deal with complexity. With the web, Google, and social media we are now able to access many more of those simple interactions because we knowledge is longer constrained by the boundaries of libraries and book covers, and because the internet lets us connect with people who can help us integrate and make sense of what we find.

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patti anklam. How to make networks work.

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