Networks: Some Notes

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A presentation I gave for GS 197: Culture and its Global Entanglements, an undergrad class at University of the Philippines Diliman

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Networks: Some Notes

Diego Maranan dmaranan@upou.edu.phFaculty of Information and Communication Studies, UP Open UniversityGS 197, 11 December 2008

slides omitted from last time

email addresses

issues/questions/reactions from previous class

(there are no stupid questions)

Networks: A special kind of graph

● Graph: A collection of nodes interconnected by paths

● Network: A collection of nodes interconnected by communication paths

What does this have to do with culture?

Analyzing networks may provide answers to interesting and important questions regarding anything that can be represented as a network:

bodies of knowledgecommunitiesorganizations

Are “artificial” groups consistent with de facto, “naturally-occuring” groups?

How robust is the network to ruptures?

Who/what is on the periphery?

Which are nodes connecting different sub-groups? How should we treat these nodes differently?

What does the shape of the network suggest about how knowledge circulates in the network

Examples

The Network of Scientific Knowledge (Boyard, 2005)

Maps generated using eight different journal-journal similarity measures

“Biochemistry appears as the most interdisciplinary discipline in science.”

The Internet on Jan 16, 2005www.opte.org

This image shows the hierarchical structure of the Internet, based on the connections between individual nodes (such as service providers). Three distinct regions are apparent: an inner core of highly connected nodes, an outer periphery of isolated networks, and a mantle-like mass of peer-connected nodes. The bigger the node, the more connections it has. Those nodes that are closest to the center are connected to more well-connected nodes than are those on the periphery.”

http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/06/19Rowe/1.aspx

The core: At the center of the Internet are about 80 core nodes through which most traffic flows. Remove the core, and 70 percent of the other nodes are still able to function through peer-to-peer connections.

http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/06/19Rowe/2.aspx

The periphery: At the very edge of the Internet are 5,000 or so isolated nodes that are the most dependent upon the core and become cut off if the core is removed or shut down. Yet those nodes within this periphery are able to stay connected because of their peer-to-peer connections.

http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/06/19Rowe/3.aspx

Mycelium (fungi)

“Nature's original Internet”

(Paul Stamets, 2007)

The notion of the rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari,1987)

● Connective– Connections are possible at any point

● Heterogenous– Unlike items can be connected

● Robust/“asignifying rupture” – e.g., peer-to-peer connections that allow the

Internet to function even when the most highly-connected nodes are remocd

Network economicsScarcity does not increase value: How useful was it to

have owned a fax machine when it first came out?

http://flickr.com/photos/nbr/2707844343/sizes/o/

Social Networks (1)

Social networking

My facebook networkgenerated using http://nexus.ludios.net

Social Networks: Linking Subgroups in my network

orphaned nodes and subgroups

nodes connecting subgroups

Developed at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland

Simultaneously presents statisical analysis alongside social network analysis graph1

SNAs can be used to examine power relations2

Screenshot from http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/socialaction [1] Adam Perer, & Ben Shneiderman. (2008). Integrating Statistics and Visualization: Case Studies of Gaining Clarity during Exploratory Data Analysis. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Florence, Italy. [2] e.g., Padgett, J. F., & Ansell, C. K. (1993). Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400-1434. American Journal of Sociology, 98(6), 1259.

Social network analysis

(SocialAction... in action.)

Some Networked Art Projects I'm Working On

Open Source Dancehttp://www.slideshare.net/diegomaranan/open-source-dance-presentation/

Building dance communities through sharing Creative Commons-licensed choreography and tracking the flow of choreographic ideas across dance communities

Independent Cinema Portalhttp://www.slideshare.net/diegomaranan/proposal-for-a-portal-to-philippine-cinema-using-data-

visualization-techniques-presentation/

Facilitating insights into independent cinemas in the Philippines (but can be extended easily to cover global cinemas) using data publicly available on the web and data visualization techniques

The Apology Projecthttp://sites.google.com/site/diegomarananprojects/todo/on-hold/The-Apology-Project

A Web 2.0 platform for public apologies

salamat