Network theory is facinating! I can’t remember how I stumbled across this article, but it’s a facinating, critical analysis of the politics of network theory. The ghost in the network: alexander galloway and eugene thacker.

It starts out looking at the soul of network , but Aristotle’s idea of the soul- which just went right over my head - so here’s the simplified wikipedia introduction:

He holds that the soul is the form, or essence of any living thing; that it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in; that it is the possession of soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all.

Ok, so back to the article…

Network science takes up this idea on the mathematical plane, so that geometry is the soul of the network. Network science proposes that heterogeneous network phenomena can be understood through the geometry of graph theory, the mathematics of dots and lines.

An interesting outcome of this is that seemingly incongruous network phenomena can be grouped according to their similar geometries. For instance the networks of AIDS, terrorist groups, or the economy can be understood as having in common a particular pattern, a particular set of relations between dots (nodes) and lines (edges). A given topological pattern is what cultivates and sculpts information within networks.

That’s what’s so facinating about it, similar network topologies appear in so many seemingly unconnected spaces. So maybe everything is connected afterall. Maybe this guy was right all along?

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age is a great intoduction to everything that is network theory and is a great place to start if you’re interested in learning more.

Soooo… with all this stuff about networks and social networks being today’s hot topic it’s easy for to get carried away thinking of people as users in these networks. myspace has around 60 million users!

But these are people, individuals, personalities. It hard to actually imagine individuals in networks at the myspace scale. So we think them as users but even you start getting down to friends we never stop to appreciate the real relationship they represent.

Blogging communities at little social networks of their own. So setting out to meet the sa crew I was really interested in meeting the bloggers (aka users) in the network. Instead, I ended up meeting from really great people!

Max, Rafiq, Dave and Mike are the some of the serious nodes in this little network but they also happen to be really great group of guys. And they’re on the case! stay tuned!