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Title: Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo Barbasi ISBN: 0-452-28439-2 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.02 (58 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Barabasi vs. Wolfram
Comment: Having read both "Linked" and "A New Kind of Science" I feel compelled to add my two cents to some other reviewer who unfavorably compares Barabasi to Wolfram.
While it is true that Linked is a bit light on the underlying math - not trivial by all means - and that there are chapters the book would be better without (last three notably, as well as the already-mentioned analysis of M$ dominance) this remains an interesting introduction to networks theory. We do not need rocket science to tell us that a scale-free network has its' vulnerability in its hubs, but I find it interesting and not entirely common sense that it is INHERENTLY more robust than a random network.
I find some of the critique here a bit petty (perhaps penned by fellow scientists ?). Barabasi comes out IMHO as a witted scientist with a knack for explaining stuff to the masses, an art in which Richard Feynman (alredy mentioned here and perhaps my all-time favorite hero) excelled. Perhaps a 100-page compendium would make a better reading, but there seems to be an unwritten publishing rule whereby no essay shorter than 250 pages sells.
On the other hand, I have rarely witnessed such an inflated ego as the one self-portrayed by Stephen Wolfram who bombastically claims to have invented a whole New Kind of Science ! His 1,200-page tome uses all variations of the "I" pronoun *ad nauseam* and there are whole sections who could be happily burned to no consequence to the reader (e.g. the proof-free wanderings on biochemistry et al.), not to mention the gazillion diagrams which cease to astonish well before you peruse the fiftieth.
Rating: 5
Summary: Thought provoking
Comment: With so much buzz about Wolfram's book, great to see a book that DOES talk about NEW science. Barabasi, the top guy in the new science of networks, talks about what he knows best: complexity and networks, and how they affect our life. While an easy read, it is full of so many thought provoking ideas, that I'd read for a while and then have to put it down to reflect over the details of what I'd just read. Gladwell's tipping point was an entertaining read, but light on true understanding. Linked makes up the difference: it breaks new ground, offering the reader insight and research into the structure of networks in just about all fields and aspects of life. While Gladwell chats about connectors, people who are incredibly sociable and well-connected, Barabasi is the one who really gets to the heart of the matter. He discovered these connectors (he calls them hubs) while looking at the www (Yahoo and Google are some of those), and he shows that they are present in the cell, in the business world (Vernon Jordan), in sex (Wild Chamberlain), in Hollyood (Kavin Bacon) and many other networks. These hubs are not accidents, but they appear in all networks as a simple rich gets richer process is responsible for them.
If you REALLY want to grasp how ideas spread, how to stop AIDS, how to break down the Internet, how to use your neighbor's computer, how to make your website matter or how to became a board member in a big company, Linked is a good place to start. Barabasi breaks down a complex world into very simple, clear concepts. While I have read several books about 'new' science, this one is really about something new, exciting, and hard to forget. Highly recommend it.
Rating: 3
Summary: Reduction to nodes and links
Comment: Albert Barabasi presents the lay reader with a stimulating description of the origins of network theory and recent applications. He describes random networks, small world and scalefree networks. In nonrandom networks the importance of hubs is emphasized. Small world networks are the ones with a well defined averge number of links, and in scalefree ones the density of links scales as a power law. For the many interesting examples discussed, I would like to have seen graphs showing scaling over at least three decades in order to be convinced of scaling. However, in practice, whether a network scales or not may not be so important. I liked best the discussions of terrorism, AIDS, and biology. If one could locate the hubs, then a small world network could be destroyed, but as the author points out there is no systematic method for locating the hubs. Also, destroyed hubs in a terror network might be replaced rather fast, whereas airline hubs could not be replaced so quickly. The book might be seen as indicating a starting point to try to develop a branch of mathematical sociology. For example, the maintainance of ethnic identity outside the Heimat is discussed in terms of networking. Now for a little criticism.
I did not find the discussion of the rich get richer' very helpful because network theory at this stage deals only with static geometry, not with empirically-based dynamics. In fact, the dynamics of financial markets have been described empirically accurately without using any notion of networking. In the text the phrase economic stability" is used but stability is a dynamic idea, and there is no known empirical evidence from the analysis of real markets for any kind of stability. The absence of dynamics on networks means that complexity is not described at all: there is nothing complex about the geometry of a static network! Suggesting that cell biology can be described by networking is empty so long as dynamics are not deduced from empirics. Nonempirical models of dynamics will probably not be of much use for making advances in understanding or treating cancer, e.g. Everything we know about cell biology and cancer was discovered via reductionism, by isolating cause and effect the way that a good auto mechanic does in order to repair a car.
Unfortunately, the author lets his enthusiasm get the best of him when he proclaims laws of self-organization" and the need to go beyond reductionism. First, there are no known laws of self-organization". The only known laws of nature are the laws of physics and consequences deduced from the laws, namely, chemistry and cell biology. Worse, every mathematical model that can be written down is a form of reductionism. Quantum theory reduces phenomena to (explains phenomena via) atoms and molecules. All of chemistry is about that. Cell biology attempts to reduce observed phenomena to DNA, proteins, and cells. Believers in self-organized criticality try to reduce the important features of nature to the equivalent of sandpiles. Network enthusiasts hope to reduce phenomena to nodes and links. In order to try to isolate cause and effect, there is no escape from reductionism of one form or another, holism being an empty illusion. So I did not at all like the assertion on pg. 200 that globalization (via deregulation and privatization) is inevitable, because there is no law that tells us that it is.
Summarizng: there is no complexity without dynamics, there are no known laws of self-organization", and reductionism is the only hope for doing science. Anyone who disagrees with this is welcome to explain to me and others the alternative ([email protected]).
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Title: Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks by Mark Buchanan ISBN: 0393041530 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan J. Watts ISBN: 0393041425 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven Strogatz ISBN: 0786868449 Publisher: Hyperion Press Pub. Date: 05 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold ISBN: 0738206083 Publisher: Perseus Books Group Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson ISBN: 0684868768 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 10 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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