Barabási’s “Linked” and the MemeMapper
During summer holidays in Spain I found time to read Barabási’s network bible “Linked”.
I focus on personal remarks, as there is a good book review available
further infos about the book here
As an adherent of self organisation theory I welcome most of the findings presented in the book. The “new” network theory seems to provide a general tool case in order to look at a variety of systems: technical networks as the internet as well as the nervous system or social relations.
This was yet a promise of cybernetics and later in the 80ies and 90ies by different self-organisation theories. I tried myself very hard to apply self-organising theories in the field of media theory (see thesis) but looking at it now in the light of network theory I have to admit that I got stuck on a descriptive level. I often needed to refer to analogies simply because the appropriate analysis tool were not available at that time. Although analogies are very important for learning and understanding new knowledge domains they are problematic at a scientific level especially when you try to explain a domain with the vocabulary of another domain. Therefore Humberto Maturana, who coined the term “autopoiesis” in the field of neurobiology, was not very happy about the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who wrote a phalanx of thick books about the “autopoiesis” of social systems. Maturana criticised that it would not be an adequate application of his theory.
The main reason for the emergence of new network theories lies in the fact that the information age produces a flood of data. E-mail archives, newsgroups and the web provide a huge database that stores human communication. Until the emergence of the internet, human communication has been very ephemeral. In order to study communication or social systems you needed either to refer to rather poor written sources like books or letters, or you had to design tests, questionnaires, or other kinds of artificial research environments. Now the data is out there and you simply need to harvest it and verify your research hypothesis.
Time will tell which kind of research questions can be answered by data based network analysis. My guess is that its unique role lies in its ability to tell us interesting things about systems not only at an intellectual level but also in a form that appeals our senses. Network analysis implies also a new form of scientific aesthetics that might pave the way for new forms of holistic understanding that we urgently need to cope with the challenges of the 21 century like global warming, poverty, “terrorism” and so on. I finally will result in new forms of maps that might extend our comprehension of complex processes and our intellectual capabilities to interact with them.
In our MemeMapper project we will try to make some – hopefully bigger - steps into that direction. Therefore we appreciate requests from network researchers in order to harvest
