Hierarchical Networks

Well that ruined my day. Running late for work this morning, I bolted down my street for the train, hurriedly swiped my Myki and, hearing a *beep* of some description, jumped on the train. It wasn’t til arriving at Melbourne Central that I realised my Myki was not touched on and by that stage I was already surrounded by menacing ticket inspectors. Now it wasn’t poor Glenn’s fault that it was his job to report me, and why should he believe my story over any one else’s this bustling Friday morning?

I’ve been catching public transport every day for about 8 years. I have never been reported. I estimate I’ve spent around $6000 on public transport over the last 8years. What strikes me, however, is the lack of trust within this interaction. Despite the fact that my Myki has about $30 on it, and the record of touch-on touch-off would no doubt prove that I’m very conscientious about using this ticket (I’d way rather pay $2 than $200 to ride the train) this organisation would rather believe that I was at fault and somehow trying to ride the system, rather than that an honest mistake had been made.

Now, to get to the point – aside from being bitter that I may have to pay a $212 fine (a rather expensive train ride in comparison to the $1.75 I expected to pay) this scenario got me thinking about different types of networks and the power arrangements within them. The Victorian Public Transport network is a heirarchical network – the power balance centred around the city hub, with each station further out of the city often becoming less and less closely controlling owing to the smaller number of people disembarking.

As a consumer, it might be fair to decide that after this incident I don’t want to interact with that business anymore, but realistically I can’t take my business elsewhere – there is no alternative train network, so my only option is to avoid public transport altogether (and I don’t drive, so bike it would have to be!) and dissociate from the network, or suck it up and stay within the network on PTV’s terms.

This made me start thinking about what networks we choose to interact with…or whether we have much choice at all…I suppose at least there is more agency in something like a network of blogs, as I can create content and choose what to engage with and what not to.