April 9, 2010 by sean.

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September 13, 2009 by sean.

Social network science researchers sifting through personal records of 5,124 male and female subjects from the 1948 Framingham Heart Study the Framingham explore how relationships directly influence behavior and thus health and happinesss [via Wired].

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July 24, 2009 by sean.

Drew Conway has a review of the July 2009 issue of Science dedicated to Network Science [via Zero Intelligence Agents]:

The currently issue of Science magazine is entirely dedicated to networks and network science. The issue is packed with interesting articles, and is certain must-read for anyone studying or working with networks. The editors of Science have done well in capturing the breadth of disciplines and interests studying networks. One article that I will not cover in detail but recommend to all readers is Carter Butt’s “Revisiting the Foundation of Network Analysis,” where he discusses what is, and more appropriately, what is not network analysis, and how the science got here.

The article discussing network analysis and national security, in fact, is an excellent example of the wide audience for this topic; however, the thesis of the piece was rather disappointing. In “Counterterrorism’s New Tool: ‘Metanetwork’ Analysis“, we we hear from a veritable who’s-who in the national security/network analysis space. Starting with those on the technology front at Palantir Technologies (the same software we used from Project Grey Goose), to well respected practitioners in academia, business and government such as Marc Sageman, Valdis Krebs and Kathleen Carley, among many others. The article discusses where networks have helped, but also possibly hurt U.S. couterterrorism efforts, which made its focus on so called metanetwork analysis confusing.

In short, metanetworks are simple multiple layers of networks; that is, in any given space there will be a layer of social structure as well as physical (roads and waterways), infrastructure (power and communication), exchange (financial), etc. Metanetwork analysis attempts to examine this complex system as a whole in order to examine how activity on one layer can affect the others, and vice a versa. In theory, this is very appealing, however, in practice this method fails in two major ways.

Careers and research in Network Science are also increasing to the point where physicist Albert-László Barabási says, “I’m unable to keep up” [via sciencecareers.com]:

What unites the sociologists, physicists, biologists, and other scientists studying networks is the recognition that “whether they’re networks of people, computers, genes, [or] neurons, they often obey similar mathematical rules and have similar properties,” says Nicholas Christakis, a professor of sociology and of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School in Boston….

The National Science Foundation, too, has been increasing its support for network science, especially within the divisions dedicated to computer science and human social dynamics. There is also growing military support for network research, Barabási says, pointing to research programs funded by the Army, Air Force, Office of Naval Research, and Defense Threat Reduction Agency. “There’s never enough money, of course,” he says. “But we’re seeing that many agencies are discovering that this is important, and they’re putting their money where their mouth is.”

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July 24, 2009 by sean.

Drew Conway has a review of the July 2009 issue of Science dedicated to Network Science [via Zero Intelligence Agents]:

The currently issue of Science magazine is entirely dedicated to networks and network science. The issue is packed with interesting articles, and is certain must-read for anyone studying or working with networks. The editors of Science have done well in capturing the breadth of disciplines and interests studying networks. One article that I will not cover in detail but recommend to all readers is Carter Butt’s “Revisiting the Foundation of Network Analysis,” where he discusses what is, and more appropriately, what is not network analysis, and how the science got here.

The article discussing network analysis and national security, in fact, is an excellent example of the wide audience for this topic; however, the thesis of the piece was rather disappointing. In “Counterterrorism’s New Tool: ‘Metanetwork’ Analysis“, we we hear from a veritable who’s-who in the national security/network analysis space. Starting with those on the technology front at Palantir Technologies (the same software we used from Project Grey Goose), to well respected practitioners in academia, business and government such as Marc Sageman, Valdis Krebs and Kathleen Carley, among many others. The article discusses where networks have helped, but also possibly hurt U.S. couterterrorism efforts, which made its focus on so called metanetwork analysis confusing.

In short, metanetworks are simple multiple layers of networks; that is, in any given space there will be a layer of social structure as well as physical (roads and waterways), infrastructure (power and communication), exchange (financial), etc. Metanetwork analysis attempts to examine this complex system as a whole in order to examine how activity on one layer can affect the others, and vice a versa. In theory, this is very appealing, however, in practice this method fails in two major ways.

Careers and research in Network Science are also increasing to the point where physicist Albert-László Barabási says, “I’m unable to keep up” [via sciencecareers.com]:

What unites the sociologists, physicists, biologists, and other scientists studying networks is the recognition that “whether they’re networks of people, computers, genes, [or] neurons, they often obey similar mathematical rules and have similar properties,” says Nicholas Christakis, a professor of sociology and of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The National Science Foundation, too, has been increasing its support for network science, especially within the divisions dedicated to computer science and human social dynamics. There is also growing military support for network research, Barabási says, pointing to research programs funded by the Army, Air Force, Office of Naval Research, and Defense Threat Reduction Agency. “There’s never enough money, of course,” he says. “But we’re seeing that many agencies are discovering that this is important, and they’re putting their money where their mouth is.”

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March 12, 2009 by sean.

Might “God” be an evolutionary abstraction of the collective intelligence of all humanity [or at least one’s local “tribe”]?

Research at the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland suggests that human capacity for religion is based in lateral frontal lobe regions and other theory-of-mind areas, “the same recently evolved brain regions that divine the feelings and intentions of other people” [via New Scientist]:

“It’s not surprising that religious beliefs engage mainly the theory-of-mind areas, as they are about virtual beings who are treated as having essentially human mental traits, just as characters in a novel or play are,” comments Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist at the University of Oxford.

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February 4, 2009 by sean.

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February 4, 2009 by sean.

Interesting article on hypothetical relationship of social and biological energy patterns [via wired]:

The human race may be caught in a biological catch-22, in which sustainable reproduction rates can only be achieved by consuming more energy.

So hypothesizes Melanie Moses, a University of New Mexico computer scientist who wonders if human societies are bound by size-dependent rules of network efficiency seen elsewhere in the biological world.

If the implications of this seem bleak, take heart: people are born to break the rules.

Moses invokes the Metabolic Theory of Energy, which explains the relationship between mammalian size, lifespans and reproduction rates — the bigger a body, the longer it lives, with fewer offspring — as a function of cardiovascular networks. As the sum length of capillaries and arteries increases, nutrient flow efficiency drops. The less efficient an animal’s networks, the more difficult it becomes to acquire the energy needed for raising a child.

Compare the size-lifespan-reproduction curve to the relationship between human economic growth and reproduction rates, and the parallels are eerie.

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February 3, 2009 by sean.

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January 28, 2009 by sean.

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January 25, 2009 by sean.

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January 20, 2009 by sean.

New research on the relationship between social interaction and the brain [via msnbc.com]:

Socially active people who were not easily stressed had a 50 percent lower risk of developing dementia compared with men and women who were isolated and prone to distress, they reported in the journal Neurology.

“In the past, studies have shown that chronic distress can affect parts of the brain, such as the hippocampus, possibly leading to dementia,” Hui-Xin Wang of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who led the study, said in a statement.

“But our findings suggest that having a calm and outgoing personality in combination with a socially active lifestyle may decrease the risk of developing dementia even further.”

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December 28, 2008 by sean.

Allen Institute for Brain Science encouraging open collaboration and personal philantropy re: brain research [via economist.com]:

Clearly the model of providing a freely accessible database is a successful one. In a sense, we have challenged other researchers to offer greater access to their findings. Will they take the challenge? My bet is that over the next 18 months we are going to see more open access and more collaboration.

In the next decade we will make great strides in uncovering the complex network of gene interactions that govern every major brain disease and will create effective therapies through traditional drug discovery or new methods for modifying gene activity. Just as the use of cardiac pacemakers or artificial knees is common today, a new generation of implantable pacemakers for the brain will be widely used to treat everything from depression to addiction and Parkinson’s disease.

Our increasing knowledge will shed light on how information is processed and stored in the human brain at a molecular level. Even now, scientists are already mimicking the brain’s information-processing capabilities to create a new generation of computer processes. We are going to get far better at this as our understanding of the brain improves.

Private philanthropy will continue to grow and help to accelerate scientific discovery. I believe we are nearing a tipping-point in brain research where the discoveries, treatments and cures will come more quickly than the questions. Private dollars, combined with broader adoption of open collaboration and data-sharing models, will help push us over the top. Success will follow.

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December 23, 2008 by sean.

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December 14, 2008 by sean.

Posted in science, user-created content, social networks | No Comments »

December 4, 2008 by sean.

Excellent short film introducing Guy Kawasaki’s new book Reality Check and the relationship between innovation and evangelism [crowdsourced marketing]:

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November 18, 2008 by sean.

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November 2, 2008 by sean.

David Spark catalogs some great “Twitter moments” that demonstrate some unique advantages of microblogging [via mashable]:

Being a Twitter user (@dspark) for some time now, I like many others have become evangelical about the micro-blogging tool.

I believe what makes Twitter so valuable are these moments of connectivity that simply aren’t possible through any other communications tool. I’ve had these “Twitter moments” and I set out to discover “Twitter moments” from others as well. What all the following stories have in common is a Twitter user had a question or a concern, and someone (or many people) responded. Twitter was the connective tissue that made that moment happen in a time of need.

Speaking of Twitter trends, Bruno Peeters created the following graph…

based on the twitterers I found from Belgium (over 200), my home country. Each Belgian twitterer is indicated as an ellipse, all other twitterers (over 500) are represented as a dot.

There are twitterers from Belgium using their mother tongue (Dutch or French). Others however prefer to use English. These twitterers are far more often connected to other twitterers from all over the world. Interesting enough, there are quite a few twitterers who are not connected at all to other persons on the Twitter platform. If a graph is based on friends, these persons will be missed.

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October 14, 2008 by sean.

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September 27, 2008 by sean.

Entertaining look at living in the GooglePlex [via gizmodo]:

The first Android phone is dropping next week, and the people who pick it up will be toting around mobile Google software in their pocket wherever they go. They’ll be using mobile Google apps, probably in concert with using Gmail, Gcal and Google Maps on their normal computer. We know that Google is tossing out all user data after 9 months, but you’ve got to wonder what kind of a picture Google is getting of its heavy users like that when it’s only getting info from how its apps are used. After the jump, an imagined day in the life of a Google user, as recorded and perceived by the Googleplex itself.

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September 21, 2008 by sean.

From virtual pets to virtual boyfriends [via techcrunch]:

In Japan, girls are crazy over virtual boyfriends. Webkare (Web Boyfriend in Japanese), a mix between a social network and dating simulation site, is Nippon’s newest web sensation. Geared exclusively towards girls, the site attracted over 10,000 members just 5 days after its release on September 10, racking up 3.5 million page views in the same time frame.

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August 8, 2008 by sean.

“Microsoft has studied a total of 30 billion instant messages sent by over 250 million people in June of 2006, and determined that we are in fact, all linked by only 6.6 degrees of separation” [via DailyGalaxy].

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July 20, 2008 by sean.

I have finally gotten around to reading Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. It’s truly brilliant and here is a taste from the supporting blog [which unfortunately seemed to run out of steam in May]:

Most user-generated material is actually personal communication in a public forum. Because of this personal address , it makes no more sense to label this content than it would to call a phone call with your mother “family-generated content.” A good deal of user-generated content isn’t actually “content” at all, at least not in the sense of material designed for an audience. Instead, a lot of it is just part of a conversation. Mainstream media has often missed this, because they are used to thinking of any group of people as an audience.

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June 22, 2008 by sean.

1) What technology advances should small businesses and individual households be taking advantage of and what is the payback to them?

Twenty years ago, there was a lot of hype about Virtual Reality where you could put on a helmet and gloves to “jack in” to cyberspace and navigate virtual worlds. All of that seems quaint if not silly now in a world where always-on access to the internet is taken for granted, especially by people under 40.

High-speed internet and free wifi will increasingly become entry-level requirements to just play in the retail game [unless your core value proposition is to provide a technology-free retreat from the digital world]. Employees will seek options to work from anywhere [not just from home] and commitments to careers within a small business will likely be tenuous given the increasing range of options available. Employers will need to explore options such as eLance [think eBay for contractors] where other companies [including many outside the US] bid for work while displaying satisfaction ratings by employers and even the earnings from previous contracts.

2) How will technology shape small businesses and households five to ten years into the future?

The next five to ten years are arguably headed in the direction of “EOD” [Everything On Demand]. Want to watch your favorite television show? Hit a button and start now. Want a tailored suit with your own custom pattern? Sure, as long as I can take it home today. Want a great meal? Let me order it and have it ready when I hit the door [and don’t expect me to wait to be seated]. Oh, and let me do all of this connected to your free wifi hotspot from my mobile device!

As consumer demands expand and patience approaches zero, many people are willing to pay a premium to minimize any fuss with payments, forms and security [witness the success of the Clear program where people pay $128 a year to avoid those airport checkpoints]. Alternative methods of payment such as PayPal, eBilMe, Bill Me Later and Revolution Money Exchange are paving the way for customers paying in a ways that best suite their needs.

3) What technology trends keep you up at night that should also concern small businesses and households?

One of the most powerful emerging technology trends with the potential for changing the game of business is what many [including Entrepreneur Magazine] are calling “Marketing in the Recommendation Age.” As consumers turn away from traditional advertising and more to the web for help in deciding what products to buy and what companies to trust, businesses both small and large have less control over their brands. Sites such as Amazon, YouTube and eBay have built there success upon peer ratings of quality. And remember that criticism and scandals tend to rise more quickly to the top of Web 2.0 rankings [even if they are not true!] because they make better stories.

Not all of this will be confined to the web as we know it today. Imagine driving in your car and asking your GPS to find the highest-rated Italian restaurants within a five mile radius? Oh, and which ones have the shortest wait? The day is coming and soon!

Instead of trying to control the messages about your business, now is the time to start thinking about encouraging your best customers to be extensions of your brand, to help spread the word and advocate for you because it is in their best interest to do so. People who make excellent recommendation to their friends, family and peers earn their own version of points in the social network. Few people worry about recommending Apple products; Hotmail spread like wildfire by adding a “Want a free email account?” link at the bottom of everyone’s messages. Other successful small businesses leverage their stories to niche groups.

For example, Koyono, a small business based in Ohio, sells premium technology-friendly products to a niche audience of professionals who are fed up with clutter and want to adopt a minimalist, yet fashionable lifestyle.

One question for small business people is, “How do I make it easier for my customers to spread a good story about us?”

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May 26, 2008 by sean.

While Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites continue to receive a lot of attention, the real influence may lie within traditional social networks [washington post]:

When researchers analyzed the patterns of those who managed to quit smoking over the 32-year period, they found that the decision appeared to be highly influenced by whether someone close to them stopped. A person whose spouse quit was 67 percent more likely to kick the habit. If a friend gave it up, a person was 36 percent more likely to do so. If a sibling quit, the chances increased by 25 percent.

A co-worker had an influence — 34 percent — only if the smoker worked at a small firm. The effects were stronger among the more educated and among those who were casual or moderate smokers. Neighbors did not appear to influence each other, but friends did even if they lived far away.

“You appear to have to have a close relationship with the person for it to be influential,” Fowler said.

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February 27, 2008 by sean.

I saw this a while ago and, until talking with a friend of mine over lunch, forgot how truly amazing it is…

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November 21, 2007 by sean.

New research conducted by Oscar Ybarra of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research shows that social interaction impacts IQ as much as “more traditional kinds of mental exercise in boosting memory and intellectual performance”:

“We found that short-term social interaction lasting for just 10 minutes boosted participants’ intellectual performance as much as engaging in so-called ‘intellectual’ activities for the same amount of time,” Ybarra said [via US News an World Report].

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October 2, 2007 by sean.

Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, discusses his controversial book A New Kind of Science which suggests that all complex systems emerge from recursive applications of simple rules, with Charlie Rose [starting around 14:20].

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September 15, 2007 by sean.

Bernie DeKoven of The Coworking Insitute describes “coliberation“:

How we have found a viable alternative for everything that people used to call “work.” How we join each other in some kind of virtual, actual coworking effort, coworking environment, doing something together for fun, on this particular page of the world wide web, thinking about making it more fun, and maybe even profitable for people to work together. [via smartmobs]

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September 6, 2007 by sean.

“Corey Phelps, an assistant professor of management and organization at the UW Business School, and Melissa Schilling, an associate professor at NYU, “analyzed the innovative performance of 1,106 companies in 11 different industries over a six-year period. They examined the pattern or structure of strategic alliance relationships among companies in each industry. They found that how firms are connected to one another influences the number of patented inventions they obtained. Those that secured more patents were classified by Phelps and Schilling as being more creative.”

According to the researchers, “companies reap greater benefits when they are part of a network that exhibits a high degree of clustering and only a few degrees of separation, both of which are characteristic of a small world network.” [via zdnet.com]

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September 3, 2007 by sean.

From the Informal Learning reference on Wikipedia:

Learners get only about 25 percent or less of what is used at work through formal learning. The majority of companies that provide training are currently involved only with the formal side of the continuum. Most of today’s investments are on the formal side. The net result is that companies spend the most money on the smallest part - 25% - of the learning equation. The other 75 percent of learning happens as the learner creatively adopts and adapts to ever changing circumstances. The informal piece of the equation is not only larger, it’s crucial to learning how to do anything.

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September 3, 2007 by sean.

A few years, I worked with a group of professional artists who were working on a contract for a large consumer electronics “box” store who wanted to co-opt the “cool” of the local arts community.

What we originally planned to do was to create fun, low barrier, highly interactive art experiences for Gen Yers at some of the galleries and clubs that were looking to attract a younger crowd. Reasoning that most people who really get into music are often those who find a way to participate [even if they don’t become musicians], we set out to do something similar with visual and performance art.

Some of the events we planned included a contest where a local celebrity would (a) “seed” the beginning of an art piece or storyline that others would enhance or (b) record a digital musical track that others could transform. We also planned to create disposable sculptures on the outdoor mall downtown where passersby would be encouraged to take a minute and add or rearrange elements. We also looked at cross-pollinating works at diverse locations in an effort to expand the audience for the locations [classical music / jazz fusion at a theater, improv comedy at an ethnic art gallery, etc.]. We created a pre-Web 2.0 website that would list scheduled events, encourage visitors to rate submissions, allow community members to upload / download / discuss works in progress, etc.

The most ambitious idea included uploads of amateur screenplays under an unrestrictive Creative Commons license that would allow others to use any submission as the basis for storyboards, conceptual art, costumes, and short films where non-artists could audition for parts or act as extras. We wanted to see if we could have short films go from outline to edited film in 30 days or less. Web community members would then vote on the best submissions and the whole thing would culminate in a 2-hour film festival with awards for the highest-rated film. Amateurs were psyched at the thought of strangers building upon their work. The pros were much more cautious or even occasionally antagonistic to the concept.

What actually happened is that the artists leading the project began fighting within themselves over “creative control” [the exact thing we were trying to overcome so that newbies could find a way in] and ended up nearly getting kicked out of town. The gallery owners who were in the most financial trouble HATED the idea of non-artists participating in their world. Our project leaders later argued that the REAL problem was the lack of sophistication in the general population! What was supposed to be a series of fun, disposable events organized throughout the city became a LECTURE to berate the clueless, unwashed masses into better supporting the unappreciated geniuses struggling to survive.

What I learned from the overall experience first is that local arts communities are often NOT cool. Second,  amateurs tend to be more willing to collaborate and try new things just for fun [meaning they have little ego / reputation at stake] and that the guidance of pros / experts / would-be gurus can often be disruptive to a collaborative creative process.

Web 2.0 is all about participation in collaborative projects, whether that be ranking user-contributed content [ala YouTube, digg or truemors], turning ON comments re: fan fiction or building loosely-connected networks of friends [Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.]. No doubt that much of the content out there is only one step above spam [”You’re an idiot LOL,” “Guess what my cat ate for dinner?”] and that much of the hype about is overblown, but the potential for using these methods to make it easier to participate in creative endeavors [rather than learning to simply appreciate the results of others] might still be vastly understated.

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September 3, 2007 by sean.

Mesh networking [YouTube clip via Meshverse] is a major component of MIT’s One Laptop Per Child project:

Mesh networking is a way to route data, voice and instructions between nodes. It allows for continuous connections and reconfiguration around broken or blocked paths by “hopping” from node to node until the destination is reached. A mesh network whose nodes are all connected to each other is a fully connected network. Mesh networks differ from other networks in that the component parts can all connect to each other via multiple hops, and they generally are not mobile. Mesh networks can be seen as one type of ad hoc network. Mobile ad-hoc networking (MANet), and mesh networking are therefore closely related, but mobile ad hoc networks also have to deal with the problems introduced by the mobility of the nodes. [wikipedia]

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