Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life
304
Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life
304Paperback
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Overview
A cocktail party. A terrorist cell. Ancient bacteria. An international conglomerate. All are networks, and all are a part of a surprising scientific revolution. In Linked, 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. Barabási shows that 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 and the Erdos-Rényi model brought the discovery of chaos theory to the general public, Linked tells the story of the true science of the future and of experiments in statistical mechanics on the internet, all vital parts of what would eventually be called the Barabási-Albert model.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780465085736 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Basic Books |
| Publication date: | 06/24/2014 |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 819,755 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
A native of Transylvania, Romania, he received his Masters in Theoretical Physics at the Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary and Ph.D. at Boston University. His previous work includes Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do (Dutton, 2010), which is available in five languages, and Linked: The New Science of Networks (Perseus, 2002), which is available in fifteen languages.
Barbási is the author of Network Science (Cambridge, 2016) and the co-editor of The Structure and Dynamics of Networks (Princeton, 2005). His work has led to many breakthroughs, including the discovery of scale-free networks in 1999, which continues to make him one of the most cited scientists today.
Read an Excerpt
This book has a simple message: think networks. It is about how networks emerge, what they look like, and how they evolve. It aims to develop a web-based view of nature, society, and technology, providing a unified framework to better understand issues ranging from the vulnerability of the Internet to the spread of diseases. Networks are present everywhere. All we need is an eye for them...We will see the challenges doctors face when they attempt to cure a disease by focusing on a single molecule or gene, disregarding the complex interconnected nature of the living matter. We will see that hackers are not alone in attacking networks: we all play Goliath, firing shots at a fragile ecological network that, without further support, could soon replicate our worst nightmares by turning us into an isolated group of species...Linked is meant to be an eye-opening trip that challenges you to walk across disciplines by stepping out of the box of reductionism. It is an invitation to explore link by link the next scientific revolution: the new science of networks.
Table of Contents
The First Link: Introduction 1
The Second Link: The Random Universe 9
The Third Link: Six Degrees of Separation 25
The Fourth Link: Small Worlds 41
The Fifth Link: Hubs and Connectors 55
The Sixth Link: The 80/20 Rule 65
The Seventh Link: Rich Get Richer 79
The Eighth Link: Einstein's Legacy 93
The Ninth Link: Achilles' Heel 109
The Tenth Link: Viruses and Fads 123
The Eleventh Link: The Awakening Internet 143
The Twelfth Link: The Fragmented Web 161
The Thirteenth Link: The Map Of Life 179
The Fourteenth Link: Network Economy 199
The Last Link: Web Without a Spider 219
Afterlink: Hierarchies and Communities 227
Acknowledgments 239
Notes 243
Index 281
What People are Saying About This
A sweeping look at a new and exciting science.
—Science Magazine
Interviews
Exclusive Author Essay
How many times have you met a stranger hundreds or thousands of miles away from your home, just to realize after a five-minute discussion that you have a common acquaintance? You say, "Small world..." and maybe mention John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation, the hit Broadway play or its popular movie version. But how is it that we're so close to perfect strangers? How is it possible to have a path of three to five handshakes to just about any of the six billion inhabitants of our crowded planet?
The answer lies in the fact that society is a very densely connected network in which we are nodes, and links represent our numerous social, professional, or family relationships. Recently, we've learned that the small worlds we experience in society are just about everywhere. Three years ago, my research group showed that most web pages are 19 clicks from each other, and that between any two chemicals in our cells there is a chain of three reactions. We learned that behind the popular "Kevin Bacon" game is Hollywood's tiny world, in which most actors are only three links from each other via movies in which they appeared together. Economists have realized that all Fortune 1000 directors are fewer than five handshakes from each other through the boards on which they jointly serve.
Yet, the most important revelation about networks -- the one that is exciting scientists from all disciplines -- has little to do with small worlds. Rather, it is the realization that the networks appearing in all different segments of nature and society are practically indistinguishable. We now understand that real networks are far from being a bunch of nodes randomly linked to each other. Instead, a few hubs -- nodes with an exceptionally large number of connections -- keep most networks together. A few individuals with an extraordinary ability to make friends keep society together. A few web pages to which everybody links (such as Yahoo! and Google) hold the World Wide Web together. Actors like Rod Steiger, who has links to more than 4,000 performers, are keeping Hollywood together (sorry, Bacon is not one of these hubs). Businessmen like Vernon Jordan hold the network of board directors together (he's just three handshakes from all other Fortune 1000 directors). My ability to write this essay is guaranteed by a few rather active molecules within my cells -- ones that hold the subtle subcellular chemical network together.
In the last three years, we've learned that hubs play a key role in making our world a small one. Just as when your journey between two small airports inevitably takes you through one or two airline hubs, the hubs in social or communication networks are at the center of the many paths connecting the nodes. Hubs guarantee that buzz and ideas will spread or that your message on the Internet gets to its destination in a very short time, and they are responsible for the outbreak of medical epidemics and computer viruses.
Probably the important lesson that we can glean from the new science of networks is that our small society is not that special. It follows simple but rigid laws that govern the growth and evolution of most networks in nature. We are just discovering how pervasive networks are, and how deeply they affect all aspects of our life. We have learned that to make sense of this complex interconnected world around us, we must start thinking networks. (Albert-László Barabási)