Saturday, January 25, 2003

Network Theory as an Art? I guess I can buy that.  But, I was surprised to see the story on the new rage in social analysis in the Arts section of the NY Times.  That is why this is not taken from an RSS feed as I don't subscribe to the Arts section. The significant statement in the article; it gives a cursory review of the subject and the two hot books: Linked and Nexus, is that hype must be separated from fact.  Though I disagree with Mr. Watts who seems to say that small world theory doesn't apply to people because of preferences.  If I read Linked correctly, Mr. Watts is mixing two paradigms - as Barbarasi's discovery of social networks behaving as "scale-free" networks is a step beyond traditional "small world" theory.  Whereas small world theorists don't provide for measurement of "types" and "strengths" of connections in social networks, Barbarsi's findings do, or at least they suggest a means for discovering those properties. But, like any paradigm shift, it takes a while before truth emerges.   comment [] 8:35:31 AM