Networks

While playing with network sites recently (Linked in, Flickr, Facebook), I recalled a book by Duncan Watts in 2003: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. The book was written, paradoxically, just on the eve of the rise of all the network sites. Watts was a professor at Columbia, but recently moved to Yahoo!, to lead that company's research in "human social dynamics, including social networks and collaborative problem solving." More paradoxically, for a reflection on electronic networks and degrees of separation, Duncan and I were networked by just one degree of separation long before the invention of Facebook. Just the smelly-socks dirty-dishes pre-electronic old-fashioned networking technology: we shared a crowded house in grad school.