Linked: The New Science of Networks
Written by Albert-László Barabási
Narrated by Henry Leyva
4/5
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About this audiobook
A cocktail party? A terrorist cell? Ancient bacteria? An international conglomerate?
All are networks, and all are a part of a surprising scientific revolution. Albert-László Barabási, the nation's foremost expert in the new science of networks and author of Bursts, takes us on an intellectual adventure to prove that social networks, corporations, and living organisms are more similar than previously thought. Grasping a full understanding of network science will someday allow us to design blue-chip businesses, stop the outbreak of deadly diseases, and influence the exchange of ideas and information. Just as James Gleick and the Erdos-Rényi model brought the discovery of chaos theory to the general public, Linked tells the story of the true science of the future and of experiments in statistical mechanics on the internet, all vital parts of what would eventually be called the Barabási-Albert model.
Albert-László Barabási
Albert-László Barabási is the Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science at Northeastern University, where he directs the Center for Complex Network Research. He also holds appointments in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Central European University in Budapest. A native of Transylvania, Romania, he received his Masters in Theoretical Physics at the Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary and Ph.D. at Boston University. He is the author of Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do, Linked: The New Science of Networks, Network Science, and he is the co-editor of The Structure and Dynamics of Networks.
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Reviews for Linked
336 ratings13 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An interesting book on network theory. The author nicely takes you through the evolutions of thought around the ways networks are organized, building up to the current theory of complex networks that relatively accurately models things like the internet. Complex networks are arranged with links between nodes. If we're thinking about the internet, then each node is a website and the links are the, well, links between them. Different nodes have different levels of fitness (mathematically defined as the likelyhood that it will be linked to, but practically just how good is the website), resulting in certain nodes (ex. Google, Amazon, Wikipedia) becoming hubs in the network, doing much of the work of interconnectivity for the entire thing.The book lays out this theoretical framework very well, and it does seem accurate. The most interesting thing about the book to me, though, was its discussion of some of the implications of this. The existence of hubs means that the connectivity of a network is inordinately maintained by certain nodes and that means that those nodes are critical if you want to either protect or destroy the network. This means, for example, that some banks could be "too big to fail," because if their connectivity were lost the entire system would go out. Even more problematic, I thought, was Barbasi's discussion of the AIDS virus - HIV spreads through a network of sexual connectivity that follows this network pattern. To stop the spread of the disease you would want to interrupt this network. If there is limited treatment available (as there is in many parts of Africa, for example) network theory requires that the most promiscuous nodes have priority for treatment. Logical, but ethically weird to me.Anyway, overall this was a very good book. It explained its topic well and gave me plenty to think about. Four stars.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5For me the book went too far in story telling details: I was bored by the small details of who did what in the morning of a day before doing something that the writer would like to mention. And generally, the whole book could have been shorter.It was interesting to read about he topology of networks for a while, but when he started talking about the revolution these things will make to science (actually, he mentiones areas specifically), well, then I felt that this reminds me a hype. Of course, I cannot judge it, but he didn't convince me.E.g. he starts talking about September the 11th, terrorists networks, coming to the conclusion - without using practically any knowledge of networks - that the only way of stopping terrorists is to cease the causes, so that noone wants to join a terrorists network. Yes, that would really be a revolution.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pretty good. I love reading about accessible abstract ways of interpreting all sorts of phenomena.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5After reading Mitchel Resnick's Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Complex Adaptive Systems), my exploration of decentralized networks went down a very viral path. This book, in particular, discusses the application of network theory in the context of its historical significance. The author explores how it can be used as a tool and device to understand cities, computer networks social networks, human-human interactions (speech), human-computer interactions (HCI), computer-computer interactions (protocol), diseases, computer viruses, nature. Based on this book and its related siblings, it inspires tremendous amounts of ideas for the next big thing in marketing strategy.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The phenomenon of networks in everyday life: from social networks to the web. How networks are organized and how they change, react to attacks or why they sometimes collapse. Nicely told with examples out of politics, maths, and mostly from the web.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Overall I enjoyed this book, but I found the examples from the social sciences most compelling because this was my interest in the book. I borrowed this book from the Stillwater Public Library.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An important book to a variety of different disciplines, with an author who is a leading researcher on the subject.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A great, informative and eye-opening book, it will change the way you think about the world around you.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Really great information, but not an easy read. Maybe the listing format used would make this better to read than listen to.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The subtitle is a pretty good summary of the premise of this book. It explores the theoretical underpinnings of things being linked (referencing, for example, the Königsberg Bridge problem) and then explores how things are linked in nature as opposed to in social structures; the major distinction is that in nature, the number of “links” held by a given thing tends to be bell-curve distributed, whereas in socially-designed phenomena, it’s more of a y = 1/x sort of “the limit does not exist” on the tail end, allowing for “hubs.” This applies not only to social structure, but genetics, airline routes, the internet, and the Kevin Bacon game.The finding is that if you have a dense network, picking a network node at random and eliminating it will not bring down the network… even if you do so for something like 80% of the network. But removing just 15-20% of the network hubs will cause the whole thing to come crashing down.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I cannot say I understood fully all that Barabási had to say, or even was able to retain all that thought I understood at the time I read it, but still and all, I am extremely glad I tackled his books. It is really quite readable! He begins it so gently, carrying even the non-mathematicians, non-physicists, and non-scientists into more and more complexity. Our understanding of our world is gaining on our ignorance! I feel I need to at least make an attempt to keep up!
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another one on the "required reading" list for library school. An engaging read.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A good introduction to network science. Barabási explains the sequence of insights that led to recent insights into the properties of scale-free networks, which show up everywhere from the Internet to cellular biology. This is just an overview; the copious notes in back provide starting points if you want to delve further into the field.