A READER'S GUIDE TO THE NEW SCIENCE OF EMERGING NETWORKS
Part chaos theory, part biology, part connect-the-dots, the science of emerging networks seems to account for almost everything from why flies swarm to how yoga got so trendy. The world�s inchoate phenomena, the theory goes, can be explained by finding underlying patterns. In recent months, the idea has jelled into a network all its own — finding its way into a pack of new books that uncover complex patterns lurking everywhere. Here�s a map to one submerged network they missed: the connections among the books themselves.
SMART MOBS Howard Rheingold, 2002
Big point: �Mobile communications and pervasive computing technologies, together with social contracts that were never possible before, are already beginning to change the way people meet, mate, work, war, buy, sell, govern, and create.�
DIGITAL BIOLOGY Peter J. Bentley, 2001
Big point: �By understanding the solutions of nature and using them to solve our own problems, we have found a whole new class of computation, a whole new way of using computers.�
BEYOND CHAOS Mark Ward, 2001
Big point: �Universality emphasizes the interconnections between the elements of a system, be they the neurons in your brain or droplets of water vapour in a cloud. What happens today is determined in part by the events that have gone before. Possibly long before.�
EMERGENCE Steven Johnson, 2001
Big point: �When I imagine the shape that will hover above the first half of the twenty-first century, what comes to mind is not the coiled embrace of the genome.� It is instead the pulsing red and green pixels of Mitch Resnick�s slime mold simulation.�
THE MOMENT OF COMPLEXITY Mark Taylor, 2001
Big point: �Complex adaptive systems can help us to understand the interplay of self and world in contemporary network culture.� We are gradually discovering that we are, in effect, incarnations of worldwide webs and global networks.�
LINKED Albert-L�szl� Barab�si, 2002
Big point: �Network thinking is poised to invade all domains of human activity and most fields of human inquiry.� Nodes and links deeply infuse all strategies aimed at approaching our interlocked universe.�
NEXUS Mark Buchanan, 2002
Big point: �Some of the deepest truths of our world may turn out to be truths about organization.� Meaningful order can emerge all on its own in complex systems made of many interacting parts.�
THE TIPPING POINT Malcolm Gladwell, 2000
Big point: �The best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends � or any of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.�
SIX DEGREES Duncan J. Watts, 2002
Big point: �The science of networks is the science of the real world — the world of people, friendships, rumors, disease, fads.� If this age, the connected age, is to be understood, we must first build for ourselves a science of connected systems — in a word, networks.�
START
signal : noise
The Transparent Corporation
Lose $6,000, Win a Vacation
jargon watch
Pssst — Pirate Radio, Pass It On
Only You Can Prevent Spam
Cleaning Up Clean Rooms
Smashing Pumpkins
Why Telemarketing Is Evil
Playing the Numbers
The Six Degrees of Six Degrees
The Daily Tribunal
The Future Is � Then
The End of TV — Again
Wired | Tired | Expired
Nuclear Anxiety
