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Network connects different diverse maps together by following a common blueprint. “A string of recent breath-taking discoveries has forced us to acknowledge that amazingly simple and far-reaching natural laws govern the structure and evolution of all the complex networks that surround us.” (Barabasi, 2002) Everything are connected. We do not noticed that we are all connected in this small world. Webblog as an example of connecting everyone. From the book Linked by Albert Laszlo Barabasi, the example of Paul and the beginning of Christianity emphasize the idea of spreading knowledge as a network system. In comparison to the example of MafiaBoy, which utilizes internet as a network. Internet sure spreads faster than Paul walking pass all the communities he did; however, this raised my question: “would Paul succeed if he was using internet?”

Thinking about Paul and MafiaBoy reminded me of …

from small world network from the Santa Fe Institute Bulletin, Volume 14, Number 2 (Fall 1999).

I found this article called Cyberspace, Cybertexts, Cybermaps” by marie-Laure Ryan throught the Patrik’s Sprawl (which is an amazing blog that I read everyday and would recomment everyone to read everyday.) From this article:

Despite these obvious differences between real and virtual geographies, the cyberspace metaphor invites us to think of the Internet as forming a parallel universe made of countless galaxies, planetary systems within these galaxies, worlds within these systems, and nations within these worlds. [1] The image of cyberspace produced by Andrew Wood, Nick Drew, Russell Beale and Bob Hendley [2] (figure 1) is a good example of this mental visualization.

The concept of rich-get-richer is an application of the preferential attachment. In a sense, it’s the seniority of the first-comers. Because the first-comers have been in the network for longer, it’s more likely that they have more chance of being linked. While the chance of being linked is high, that means they will most likely be heavily linked. Following the preferential attachment law, they are more likely to be linked too. As new nodes join the network, these heavily linked nodes will be linked more and more and become a hub. The idea behind the fit-get-richer concept is not much different from the rich-get-richer except that it’s the latecomers that become the hub. The latecomers pass the pioneers to become bigger hubs. The example of that would be google. As the most popular search engine, google has more customers than …

When we think about the spreading of virus, we have to think about AIDS. It is a failure of classical epidemic model. We realize the power of hub through patient zero, Gaetan Dugas, who slept with more than 200 singles per year. He becomes the hub that spreads out the virus. The people he had sexual intercourse with then spread out more.