Scott Weingart in this week’s reading “Demystifying Networks” discusses the basics of networks. He describes networks as “a net-like arrangement of threads, wires, etc...It later came to stand for any complex, interlocking system.” Networks cannot stand on their own; they are interdependent on connections between all of the little parts that make them up. Weingart further explains, “Network analysis generally deals with one or a small handful of types of stuff, and then a multitude of examples of that type.” In Weingart’s example, he uses books and authors as his nodes—which are basically an assortment of stuff. Nodes also have attributes, like page number, title, birth and death, etc. The combination of books and authors makes it a bimodal network and if we add publishers, then it is multimodal. By doing this, each book is connected to an author, who is then connected to one or more publishers (Weingart). Ultimately, as expected, these connections form relationships and, in this case, an authorship relationship.
This concept of networks and everything that they are comprised of (nodes, relationships, types, etc.) immediately made me think of six degrees of separation. Six degrees of separation is “the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps” (Wikipedia). Everyone is essentially connected to each other through a vast web of friends, acquaintances, and strangers. The creator of this theory, Frigyes Karinthy, proposed that “the modern world was ‘shrinking’ due to [the] ever-increasing connectedness of human beings…He [believed] that despite great physical distances between the globe’s individuals, the growing density of human networks made the actual social distance far smaller.” This was back in 1929 when the “technological advances” in communication and travel were far less developed than they are today. Due to the progress in modern technology, the six degrees, nowadays, is probably more around three.
I have personal experience in this “six degrees of separation” phenomenon. Because of the multitude of social networks available on the Internet it is hard to not be constantly in contact with people across the world. When I was accepted into college and looking for a roommate I was contacted by and put into contact with many friends of friends, or many “my best camp-friend’s older brother’s ex-girlfriends” who I happened to know of through seeing pictures of them on Facebook. In the ever-increasing technological world, instances like this will only become more common and maybe even one day there will only be a two or one degree of separation.
Works cited:
Scott Weingart, “Demystifying Networks”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation