I've been reading Linked, a book about the advances in modeling and understanding the nature and behavior of networks since, the beginnings of graph theory. While it's non-technical, and therefore slightly superficial, it covers some fascinating material. Although some of his conclusions seem at first trivially obvious (like, people link preferrentially to good websites), he goes on to explore the ramifications, the methods of remarkably simple modeling, and (by far the most interesting) the parallels with systems where it's far less obvious. Who knew that cells behave like food chains behave like the internet? That Microsoft is a Bose-Einstein condensate? That there's a mathematical proof that, the internet being structured as it is, stupid people will continue to send me year-old viruses? Not me, but it's amazing how simple it all sounds when you hear it. Just another example of how cool the world is.
Category: Geek
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