Cyberkinetics

Linked

If you enjoyed The Tipping Point and you are looking for more information on networks and how information spreads, you’ll enjoy Linked. Barabasi is a professor of physics at Notre Dame studing the properties of networks. He’s found that many networks are scale-free networks and he describes the similarities of a diverse set of networks from the internet, to cells, to Hollywood, to people’s sexual relationships to Al-Queda. He claims that corporations now have to be organized in a network instead of a hierarchy in order to survive. We all have a lot to learn in this area.
Some of the characteristics of a scale-free network is that there is no one central hub, there are a number of hubs that have many links connected to them (Google, Amazon, etc). In addition there are a few nodes (or hubs) with lots and lots of links (like Google and Amazon) and lots of nodes with just a few links. And there’s no controling factor but it’s not random. New nodes tend to connect to existing nodes that have been there the longest and that have the most links.
All that said, Barabasi makes it clear that there’s still a lot of research left to do in this area. Barabasi has a web page that discusses some of his current research at http://www.nd.edu/~alb.

Reality Mining the Organization

"Reality Mining" the Organization talks about tracking whom employees talk to, what they talk about and what tone of voice they are using. My first response was “how scary!” I mean, I don’t care if my company knows who I’m talking to, but to know when I talk to them, what I say and even what tone of voice I use sounds like big brother. Now, in practice, nobody is actually going to listen to the conversation, like nobody actually reads all my emails that they track. However, I think the data will much more likely be used to correct than to collaborate. So I think it’s much more likely that they would discover someone is antagonistic to 90% of people, and decide that combined with their poor performance, they aren’t worth keeping, then someone would decide that because someone regularly talks about the latest technology with ten of their friends, that they should be on the new technology team. But you never know, like all technology, its usefulness will depend on how well it’s deployed.

Wired News: Playas Pay to Spread the Luv

Wired has an article about a new networking site called FunHi, Wired News: Playas Pay to Spread the Luv. People join, pick a ganster personality type, post a picture and then give each other electronic gifts. These electronic gifts (like virtual airplanes or diamonds) cost less than a quarter on average and you can give them to anyone, but they can’t be regifted. You can also rate people on how cool or sexy they are.

FunHi has pulled in more than $10,000 in their first month. Talk about social networking and web based businesses!

Virtual Reality

The MIT Tech Review article My Avatar, My Self talks about virtual reality sites. You logon, define your character and wander around meeting with people, playing games, shopping, etc. It’s like the online games such as Everquest but you’re not playing a game. You’re talking to real people about whatever you want. It’s the first version of the “cyberspace” concept prevalent in science fiction books by authors like Neal Stephenson and William Gibson.