this is a cheesy picture of people holding hands around the world
I’m starting to feel a trend forming with what I like to write about when it comes to blogs. If I only write about people and the way people feel about each other; and technology, and the way people feel about technology, I will have temporarily fulfilled my urge to write and think about people and technology. This is no different. In class, we were again talking about networks and network structure, and Professor CHayden again began talking about the strength of networks and network linkages. As witnessed from a few blogs ago, one might be able to tell that I really like thinking about network linkages.
The internet has brought us many great things that we can use to track each other, and a very interesting invention was that of link analysis software. With this we can see and follow links between nodes. Nodes being individuals, agents or groups, we can see common bonds between them. What does this mean? What does this do? Imagine you are throwing a party, you want to invite 100 friends, they are from all over the world, but unless they are all from 100 different countries (which, you are a lucky person if your friends are that diverse) some of them will be from the same country. The link analysis will show this. When everyone arrives from the party, you discover that many of them know each other. ‘How is this possible’, you ask yourself. Link analysis will show that one third of them went to the same university, surprisingly, the one you didn’t go to; it will show that one half of them attended the same conference two years ago, but you were sick and missed it; it will show that one six of them have children at the same school; it will show that 17 of them secretly formed a you-bashing facebook group, and that they only attended the party to sabotage it. In this, we see considerable overlap, and these multiple links are depicted in visual format, we can see what binds our friends.
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