Linked: The New Science of Networks 160
| Linked: The New Science of Networks | |
| author | Albert-László Barabási |
| pages | 229 |
| publisher | Perseus Publishing |
| rating | 10 |
| reviewer | kurtkilgor |
| ISBN | 0738206679 |
| summary | An introduction to scale-free networks and their broad applications |
It turns out that in the past few years, a decent amount of progress has been made on this front, largely thanks to the Internet. The Internet allows scientists to exchange information and speed up research, but more pertinently it is a test subject for these kinds of large-scale interaction problems. Linked: The New Science of Networks presents both the story of how the science has developed, and what it means. Unlike much popular scientific literature, the author himself is an active participant in the field.
The biggest surprise and most important lesson of the book is that the Internet, cellular biology, society, matter, and an incredible array of other seemingly unrelated things all form a particular type of structure called a scale-free network. These types of networks have only been described in detail recently, and their study promises to be as fundamental and rewarding as, for instance, waves or diffusion. The presence of the same structure in many unrelated situations suggests that there is a deep physical or mathematical principle which governs them.
The discovery of this principle is the subject of the first half of the book, which is a sort of detective story that leads from the most primitive concepts of graphs, as pioneered by Euler, to the state of the art. It is very interesting in itself to see how inconsistencies in mathematical models have led people to develop more and more accurate ideas of how such networks function. There is a tiny amount of math in the footnotes available for those who want it, but generally no prior knowledge is required. The author writes with plenty of anecdotes, especially in the beginning starting out with such introductions as this one of Paul Erdos:
"One afternoon in late 1920s Budapest, a seventeen-year-old youth cantered with a weird gait through the streets and stopped in front of an elegant shoe shop that sold custom-made shoes ... After knocking on the store's door-an act that would have seemed just as odd back then as today-he entered, ignoring the saleswoman at the counter, and went up to a fourteen-year-old boy in the back of the shop.'Give me a four digit number,' he said.
'2,532,' came the wide-eyed boy's reply . . .
'The square of it is 6,441,024,' he continued. 'Sorry, I am getting old and I cannot tell you the cube.'"
For another example of both the writing style and the unusual content, the author humorously describes the discovery of a similarity between Bose-Einstein condensation and economic monopoly:
"Essentially Microsoft takes it all. As a node, it is not just slightly bigger than its next competitor. In the number of its consumers it simply cannot be compared. We all behave like extremely social Bose particles, convenience condensing us into a faceless mass of Windows users. As we purchase new computers and install Windows, we carefully feed and maintain the condensate developed around Microsoft. The operation systems market carries the basic signatures of a network that has undergone Bose-Einstein condensation, displaying clear winner-takes-all behavior."
The rest of the book devotes a chapter to a particular example of a network: epidemics, the Internet, economics, etc. One thing is abundantly clear: the more we know about how these things work, the better we'll be able to curb DDOS attacks, stop disease, and control economic failures. An unlikely example of a scale-free network is the cell. It turns out that the interactions among a cell's proteins can be modeled this way, and if we could only understand it, we would be able to come up with treatments analytically, instead of by trial and error as it is done now.
It seems to me that with a greater understanding of networks, we will be able to finally advance in many fields in which progress is currently stalled. From firefly research to AIDS treatment, this is the Next Big Thing.
You can purchase Linked from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Book's site (Score:5, Informative)
This [nd.edu] is the photos page, with photos like.. umm... this [nd.edu].
More reviews (Score:5, Informative)
Nature [nature.com] (ho-hum)
Computer User [computeruser.com] (thumbs-way-up)
Duhh.... (Score:1, Informative)
Sociology studies the behavior of entire societies (Score:3, Informative)
There just happens to be an entire discipline dedicated to exploring the behavior of entire societies. It's called sociology.
Within society, there's an entire sub field that's been studying social networks for years. Things like how information is spread, how people get jobs, how diseases like AIDS spread, all have been explored using social network analysis.
If you want a mathematical description of "tipping points", take a look at Mark Granovetter's work on threshold models of collective behavior. Gladwell's book is based his work (though he only references Granovetter's work on how people get jobs).
Snow Crash... (Score:4, Informative)
I really don't think there isn't much complexity that can't be explained by the mere fact that we are all actually living on top of a Giant's head
Where's Hari Seldon when you need him? (Score:3, Informative)
another "science of networks" book (Score:2, Informative)
S/N:R
Re:Please do not mix sociopolitics with physics (Score:5, Informative)
If you had read the book (pp.93) and maybe this paper [nd.edu], you would have noticed that Bose-Einstein condensation is used to mathematically explain monopolies in the economic network. So, the analogy is a) explained and b) may be even valid.
From the book: "It is, simply, that in some networks the winner can take all. Just as in a Bose-Einstein condensate all particles crowd into the lowest energy level, leaving the rest of the energy levels unpopulated, in some networks the fittest node could theoretically grab all the links, leaving none for the rest of the nodes. The winner takes all."
Just my 2 Eurocents.
Re:The New Science (Score:3, Informative)
and visit http://www.santafe.edu. It is very interesting. Santafe.edu is a college that gathers researchers from a wide number of fields in a shared environment, so that they can share ideas between fields of study.
Barabasi, Wolfram and all that. (Score:1, Informative)
Barabasi and co-author Albert are literarily inventing a new field of physics/math; I'm not even quite sure of what to call it. However, they are very much in touch with current research in the field, and their work is very timely (who else could tell you that the "degree of separation" on the web is 19 and not 6?)
As for Wolfram, however, I cannot say the same. I've seen Wolfram present his book in a special seminar (but haven't read it), and my impression is this: he is an exceptionally bright guy, but not in touch with current research. Wolfram is able to explain a wide variety of fields within physics and mathematics with great confidence, and I would be the last to call him un-educated (no two-week crash course in particle physics on his behalf! Actually, I think he was the only grad-student that Richard Feynman supervised!). I realize that when you "invent paradigm-changing science", you will necessarily meet some opposition from other researchers, but Wolfram's problem is this: he had a good idea some 20 years ago (cellular automata), secluded himself in a room since then developing his idea (as well as various sales-pitches for Mathematica), and forgot to consult with the rest of the scientific community. I understand very well why he's being critizied by his peers.
I'm afraid that this "New Science" is quite old... (Score:5, Informative)
If you're interested in learning more about the large body of literature in this area, be sure to visit the INSNA [www.sfu.ca] web site. I think you'll find it much more informative than reading popular books on the subject.
-Carter
SFI's Kaufmann explains the origins of order (Score:3, Informative)
However, the work of Sante Fe researcher Stuart Kaufmann (The Origins of Order, etc.) gives a whole new direction, showing how complex, interlocked systems can arise in some circumstances by winnowing a more complex chaotic system that arises naturally. It sounds circular until you look at it carefully, but Kaufmann backs up his analysis with extensive computer simulation as well as a deep analysis of genetic control processes (Kaufmann's original specialty).
These ideas can be used far beyond the biological settings for which they were first developed. Examples range from the crystallization of activity patterns in a new organization or cultural area to the process of learning itself, where the "aha" experience marks the emergence of a set of coherent concepts from the overflowing cloud of ideas that sets the stage for it.
Adding Kaufmann's ideas to your set of explanatory tools will permit you to resolve many complex-systems questions that are otherwise intractable. And computer types are particularly well-situated to understand and use his arguments.
Re:Sociology studies the behavior of entire societ (Score:3, Informative)
-Carter
Re:Interesting but...... (Score:2, Informative)