Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means
by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Plume (April 29, 2003)
A cocktail party. A terrorist cell. Ancient bacteria. An international conglomerate.
All are networks, and all are a part of a surprising scientific revolution. Albert-László Barabási, the nation’s foremost expert in the new science of networks, takes us on an intellectual adventure to prove that social networks, corporations, and living organisms are more similar than previously thought. Grasping a full understanding of network science will someday allow us to design blue-chip businesses, stop the outbreak of deadly diseases, and influence the exchange of ideas and information. Just as James Gleick brought the discovery of chaos theory to the general public, Linked tells the story of the true science of the future.
See the book’s website at http://barabasilab.com/LinkedBook/
Albert-László Barabási is a pioneer of real-world network theory, and at 32, he was the youngest professor to be named the Emil T. Hofmann Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame and has won numerous awards for his work, including the FEBS Anniversary Prize for Systems Biology and the John von Neumann Medal for outstanding achievements.
1 Comment
“Linked” offers a very interesting perspective to how communications between others had begun and developed over time. It offers countless examples as to how this process of “networking” develops between groups of people. My personal favorite networking study mentioned in the novel focuses on mailing a letter to a random person that lives far away from the source. The sender is only allowed to mail the letter to those whom he or she knows. Through a specific chain of people who hardly know each other, the letter successfully arrives at its expected destination. This example perfectly portrays how, although we may not know everybody, we are all linked together. Besides the contents, the book itself is a tad bit repetitive, which may cause a loss of interest. However, it is mainly to reinforce the ideas that the author is presenting. Overall, this book is a good-read for those who are interested in how everything in this world is connected or maybe even college students who are majoring in communications.