Reading 08.1

In The Science of a Connected Age, Watts introduces us to the idea or small worlds, or as we will come to learn, small groups. He talks about the frequently forgotten enabler of our connectivity: the power system. This certainly made me chuckle, as I can certainly attest to taking this entire system for granted which allows me to perform my networked tasks which have engrained themselves in my day to day life. I don’t think I have physically looked at a power line in years. In fact, I grew up in a suburb in A.C.T where a key selling point was that the power lines were run underground and forced out of sight (and out of mind). But as Adrian has reminded us a few times this semester, we constantly bathe in an extraordinary sea of mobile data and radio waves. Just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. This Gizmodo article shows images from an artist who worked in collaboration with an astrobiologist to show us what the world might look like if we could see these wireless signals.

Image via Casey Chan

The power system is arguably the most essential technological feature of the modern world… Without power, pretty much everything we do, everything we use, and everything we consume would be nonexistent, inaccessible, or vastly more expensive and inconvenient.”

Watts reminds us that the power system, and indeed most systems, are made up of many parts. It is in this action that something remarkably interesting happens – a large collection of components are assembled into a system which gives us something entirely different from just a collection of parts. Watts prompts us to being thinking how individual behaviour can aggregate to collective behaviour.

Watts tells us that “a network is nothing more than a collection of objects connected to each other in some fashion.” They are dynamic and ever-evolving.

I found it Interesting that Watts, writing in 2003, asks “how vulnerable are large infrastructure networks like the power grid or the Internet to random failures or even deliberate attack?” We have since seen this exact phenomenon with DDOS attacks facilitated by extreme online activist groups such as Anonymous.

I particularly liked Watts’ colourful example of how power consumption trends were analysed in England following surges that were later linked to households making cups of tea during half-time of football matches. “Although individually, the British are as complicated as anyone, you don’t need to know much about each of them to figure out the surges in power demand, just that they like soccer and tea.” (As someone with an English boyfriend, I can wholeheartedly say that I love a bit of Pommy-bashing!)

Watts asks us to think about the relationship between individuals and the groups/networks which they make up. Although the structure of these relationships is interesting, what’s more important is how they affect individual behaviour or the behaviour of the whole system.