This 8.26 minute video is a dialog between network theorist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and social scientist James Fowler. I found it through wonderful Stephen Downes, who never misses anything meaningful about education.
The Barabasi/Fowler conversation speculates on the human use of what we have understood about networks through their crucial new understanding of network functionality. I suggest there is a next step not yet taken in this thinking. Much is said about the impact of networks themselves. Fowler discusses the use by the Dean and Obama campaigns of networks. The implication in virtually all social networking discussion so far has been about the impact and power of the networks.
I propose a different emphasis: The locus of power in a network is a single node. The prime example at the moment is how Obama wielded this power. A network did not arise to find and support him. With insight and calculation he formed and used the network that dumped money into his coffers and votes to his election.
A network is capable of emerging a gestalt, which is something in which the whole is more than the sum of the parts. The individual human intellect is constantly guiding that person’s position in networks of thought, social participation, and control. I think network theory does not condemn us to the being lost in the mob. What we are understanding in the 21st century is giving us ways as individuals to participate in patterns that emerge more than the sum of the parts. We are endowed with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – exercised via our individual nodeship in the network of humanity.
Much more on this will be coming soon at GoldenSwamp.com.
