Thoughts based on the Barabási reading.
The Erdos number. Each person who coauthored a book or article with Erdos (a great mathematician) has an Erdos number 1; a person who coauthors with one of Erdos’ coauthors has an Erdos number 2, and so on. In the end, we discover that the people of the scientific community are remarkably close nit, with people such as Bill Gates boasting an Erdos number 5, and he is more of an innovator than a scientist.
Even then, they discovered that those scientists should have had a relatively large Erdos number if they had picked their coauthors randomly, but their small Erdos numbers points to the fact that they did not pick them randomly, but that they did in fact cluster.
Clustering is the social practice of maintaining relations with people who maintain relations with each other. When we cluster, we dramatically heighten the chance of two people knowing each other. In fact, clustering is the only way that the six degrees of separation can even exist. What does this mean in terms of network media?
Our strong ties are often rendered useless in a practical sense. They move around the same people we do, and therefore rarely are the ones to offer us job opportunities and the such. It’s our weak ties that we need to take advantage of. Fortunately or unfortunately, someone already has. FaceBook and other social media networks are most likely the first to jump up at the opportunity. How does this interrelation with everyone in the world affect us? How does the fact that I am no more than 6 steps away from any given person on Facebook change anything?
Well, if the strong ties are useless for information spread, then this means everything. Think about it, what are the odds of the first degree of separation being a strong tie, someone you are friends with, quite low, so the second is already quasi inexistent. This means that by the first or second degree, you already have thousands of weak ties begging to be exploited, used for rumour spreading, information flow, commercial practices such as “Tell a friend and get free [..]”. I never even realised the extent of the power of our networks!
And now, a video example of synchronised clapping, the human brain’s subconscious need to synchronise itself with others around us. (it’s sort of relevant, kinda)