Reading 08

Watts, Duncan J. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. London: Vintage, 2003. Print. (Extract – PDF)

I must admit I had a little giggle to myself when I realised the author who’s last name is Watts, discusses power grids within this weeks reading. He discusses in this reading how networks can be considered as systems and how the audience may understand the behaviours of the component individual but how, collectively behaviour changes. I thought it was fascinating when Watts posed a somewhat unanswerable question of ‘how vulnerable are large infrastructure networks like the power grid or the internet to random failures or deliberate attacks?’. Unanswerable in the sense that research is still being done on this matter, which bothered me as I really like to have answers to such interesting statements.

That’s the problem with modern research – there is so much we still don’t know.