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NETWORKS | Noah Brier

Thinking About Networks

Just a bunch of stuff that's been floating around in my head lately about the role of networks in our lives.

January 25, 2009 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 4 COMMENTS

One idea I've been turning over in my head lately is around the idea of desire lines. These are the unpaved paths people chose to take and eventually trample, turning what was one person's decision to stray from the pavement into an all-but-official route. I love desire lines as a metaphor because they expose the network of collective decision-making that tends to otherwise go unnoticed in the physical world.

On the internet, of course, things are very different. Every day we encounter the fruits of collective decision-making and most of the time are quite aware of the role we play in it. As I wrote in 2006, "I think the most important effect of the internet thus far is that it's exposed the network. For the first time everyone can understand what a network is and how it works. Now that we do, we're beginning to take that knowledge and exploit it." (By the way, I have trouble how much I love the fact that I can pull up forgotten thoughts from 2006 in an instant. It's an amazing power to possess.) This knowledge, of course, is what leads to people gaming the system, whether it be shady search engine optimization or manipulating Digg. Ethical issues notwithstanding, though, it's pretty amazing to think that so many people understand the core functionality of networks (even if they don't understand that they understand).

What's at the heart of this all is data: Before the web there was no real way to fully comprehend how networks functioned because the datasets were so small. In fact, I'd argue, that was true for most things. The web affords us the opportunity to play the role of amateur social scientist, looking at datasets that social scientists would have only dreamed of 30 years ago. As James Fowler explains in this Seed Salon with Albert-Laszlo Barabasi:

Well, the great thing about these massive, passive data sets is that we're going to have really deep information about a very, very large number of people. So we won't be forced anymore to make trade-offs between depth and breadth. But then the question becomes: What kind of preparation are we going to give our students? We've had a revolution in game theory in the past 30 years, so that a good number of political scientists all across the country work only on mathematical, closedform models. We've also had a revolution in the application of statistics.

But both of these revolutions have been built on this atomistic view of human beings. Statisticians make the assumption that all the observations are independent in order to be able to calculate statistical significance. Game theorists make it because, as you know, getting anything to work out in a closed-form model is nearly impossible if you assume that people are taking into account the preferences of other people.

We need not only to ramp up the amount of methodological training that people in social sciences have, but also to shift their perception into realizing that the relationships between people are important.

This is not constrained to social science, or even just academia, as people we all need to ramp up our understanding of the interconnection between individuals and their decisions. In fact, I think laymen may be ahead of the scientists in this respect. Social scientists (especially economists) have a lot invested in the individual view of human beings, the idea that we are rational actors generally unaffected by the world around us. This, of course, is wrong and behavioral economists are doing a great job of throwing a few wrenches into the field (of course the world economy collapsing isn't helping either).

Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling and have lost focus a bit. Partly that's because I don't really know where to go here. I know this is important, but there's a bit of a "what next" feeling left with me. What does a world look like where people understand the fundamentals of network science? How does the observation of group behavior in real time move us in directions we might not have expected? What does it mean for an individual to recognize their role within the mass?

Obviously, I'm not entirely sure how to answer those questions at the moment, but I'll keep thinking about it (and would love any thoughts you have).


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COMMENTS

1O.S

Interesting thoughts. Been going at it too but perhaps from another starting point. I don't have any conclusions either really, but I do think (and the Armano-twitter-helping-a-family further indicated it) that as we understand, and can actually see for ourselves, how we function within a network, we'll be more likely to participate with very very small amounts (of money, time, energy or whatever) because we get more immediate proof of what we, in a network, network can accomplish. I think that it will generate more giving and helpful behavior. The latest trendwatching briefing is kind of on that subject I think. Generation G. We, for the first time, actually see kind of immediately what we can accomplish. We see how friends just joined the group we created or joined. All of a sudden you see that you, the little person you are, sparked a mass-joining and all of a sudden accomplished something. Perhaps something towards that is what I think. Basically, we'll see how goodness works (and evil...).

January 25, 2009

2Tim Walker

One interesting application of this: marketing.

If you're an old-school marketer, it's easy to assume that you're going to construct campaigns that will reach N people, of which X% will take an interest, X - Y% will take action and become prospects, X - Y - Z% will become qualified leads or purchasers, et cetera.

But while the better breed of old-school marketers will understand the power of word-of-mouth, many of the old-schoolers (even the good ones) won't account for networked peer-to-peer feedback in their thinking.

Some nontrivial part of the online data-mass you're talking about is taken up with consumers talking about their consumption choices, in juiced-up, searchable, network-effect-havin' ways that the old word-of-mouthers couldn't even have comprehended.

Where am I headed with this? Dunno. But it's interesting to mull . . .

January 26, 2009

3stephanie gerson

"Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling and have lost focus a bit. Partly that's because I don't really know where to go here."

I'd instinctively turn to monsieur Kevin Kelly and the notion meta-individuals. in order of increasingly complex collective action: crowds, groups, meta-individuals (meta-individuals being equivalent to Kelly's super-organisms). and if you add individuals: individuals, crowds, groups, meta-individuals. the "what next" for me is what happens when these four entities begin to interact with EACH OTHER. beyond what meta-individuals may be capable of, for example, what will be possible when meta-individuals and individuals work together?

perhaps looking at humans as individuals feels "wrong" right now, while we're being (re-)enamored with networks. but perhaps in the future, when collaboration across multiple scales of organization emerges, there will be a renewed place for this way of understanding...

ps. I Love Barabasi. thanks for that link.

January 26, 2009

4Ana Andjelic

hey noah,

there's a cool saying in sociology: "technology is society made visible".

and i actually don't think that anyone but advertisers today think that targeting individuals on social networks is a good idea.

in fact, the long tail stuff make a similar mistake: it assumes that people make choices independently & that their choices are results of their individual preferences.

but since this is never the case, what happens is that even in the absence of market constraints (that digital was supposed to eliminate), the Pareto Principle (20%:80% rule) regularly turns up. [wonder if Twitter is going to display the same 20:80 rule, and when most of us end up following the same people.]

to think about relations on the web is, for me, thinking about information. in fact, a relation is itself information that a certain type of connection happened.

a question: if you just focus on making (all and any) relation visible, how would you know which way to go when you get to a fork in a desire line?

p.s. traditional view of human rationality and market efficiency has been abandoned in economic sociology & behavioral economics ever since Kahneman & Tversky made their Prospect Theory (pretty awesome) in the 70s and later got a Nobel Prize for it. so, academia's actually been on it for a while ;)

January 27, 2009