Martin Rosvall is a Swedish researcher at the University of Washington. In the model above he has shown how 54 of the 100 most influential people in the world, according to Time Magazine, are connected to each other. When the list was published in 2006, Rosvall used Google to find the many connections, and from that he drew this model of networks.
It is interesting because it shows a network in which influence and power is distributed between a large number of hubs. The model contains its share of trivial findings, but also many surprises. For instance, it is no surprise that the greatest hub in the network is the President of the United States. As
acknowledged “leader of the free world,” one has considerable gravitas. But it may be more surprising to find that Matt Drudge is another big hub. He is the editor of web based political gossip magazine the Drudge Report, www.drudgereport.com. Just like rapper Sean Combs (also known as P. Diddy, formerly Puff Daddy) is a big hub, with more links than Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel – or even Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Sean Combs is actually only two connections away from George W.
Bush, and is so well-connected that he has influence in politics as well as in showbiz.
It also portrays a difference in strength in the individual
connections, and this is important too. The darker lines are the strongest connections. When there’s a distinction between strong and weak connections it is partly due to Mark
Granovetter. He is a professor at Stanford University in San Francisco, where he previously headed up the Department of Sociology. As early as the the year 1973 (when Elvis said Aloha from Hawaii) Granovetter introduced a theory of social networks, in his article The Strength of Weak Ties.
Granovetter had tried to get American Sociological Review to publish it in 1969, to no avail. But he managed to get it published in 1973, in a shorter version; in the essay he describes the difference between strong and weak links. The strong
connections are our close network, those whom we “ping” the most (see Chapter Five), and with whom we consider it most important to keep in touch. The weak connections are either
people we’re directly connected to, but not very strongly
(acquaintances we see once in a while; the local shop owner; a distant cousin). Or it may be those we are linked to via stronger connections.
These last ones are particularly interesting. Because this is where it is possible for Homo Conexus to expand the network, which, as previously mentioned, is the driving force behind large parts of Homo Conexus’s life. In a 1983 update of The Strength of Weak Ties, Granovetter points out that it is the weaker of the connections that tie the network together, and thereby create the difference between the isolated individual-centered network of the industrial society and the cohesive, internally-connected network of the Network Society. Granovetter uses the individual
“Ego” as an example:
“Ego will have a collection of close friends, most of whom are in touch with one another - a densely knit clump of social structure.
Moreover, Ego will have a collection of acquaintances, few of whom know one another. Each of these acquaintances, however, is likely to have close friends in his own right and therefore to be enmeshed in a closely knit clump of social structure, but one different from Ego's. The weak tie between Ego and his acquaintance, therefore, becomes not merely a trivial acquaintance tie but rather a crucial bridge between the two densely knit clumps of close friends.”
Granovetter thinks that there probably wouldn’t have been any connection at all between the two bodies of friends, if it hadn’t been for Ego’s random acquaintances. But the weaker
connection has further importance:
“It follows, then, that individuals with few weak ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system and will be confined to the provincial news and views of their close friends. This deprivation will not only insulate them from the latest ideas and fashions but may put them in a
disadvantaged position in the labor market, where advancement can depend, as I have documented elsewhere (1974), on knowing about appropriate job openings at just the right time.”
What Granovetter puts so well here is what drives Homo Conexus: The expansion of possibilities. If one sticks to the isolated networks of Industrial Society, it means cutting off the possibilities elsewhere in the network. And the road to these peripheral possibilities is the weak connections. They may be weak but nonetheless extremely important to Homo Conexus.
Granovetter mentions the labor market as an example, but fundamentally it’s the same in all aspects of life to Homo Conexus.
A weak connection to a hub is for instance very valuable, because the hub is the access to other parts of the network, through his, or her, strong and weak connections. And for the same reason it is very important to Homo Conexus to constantly keep the network channels open. Mark Granovetter and Stanley Milgram are among the key players when it comes to research into the networks between people. Barabási and Rosvall are among the leading researchers into how networks behave mathematically, those networks that exist between people.
But what about the networks between humans and non-humans? The networks between people, and animals, and things? Can a dog be part of your network? Or how about a physical object – can a table?
When I talked to Leonard Kleinrock (see Chapter Three) he said:
“I am absolutely certain that all things and people one day will have an IP number.”
The IP address is the number which identifies a computer which is on line. Your broadband modem has an IP address which identifies it on the internet, and your laptop is given an IP address when it accesses your wireless network at home.Your cell phone has an IP address on the telecommunications network if you use the phone for data.
But what Kleinrock is saying is that some day little, wireless network chips will enable even plants, dressers and micro-wave ovens to have IP addresses (network-connected micro-wave ovens are already on the market, as a matter of fact). Everything in the world will, according to Kleinrock, be connected in one big
internet, and will be able to share information. This may be something of a utopia (or dystopia, depending on your point of view) on Kleinrock’s behalf. But thinkers already deal with a similar vision, only without the interference of technology.