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May 12, 2021

In the first episode of Season 2 of the Cohere podcast, Bill Johnston and Dr. Lauren Vargas explore the concept of "network" as it relates to online and real-life communities.

In the episode they cover:

The many definitions of “Network”

  • The technical infrastructure linking people and things
  • The implicit and dynamic connections between people in a group (aka social graph)
  • The activity of actively seeking connections
  • Special places vs special people

How a network relates to a community
"The difference between a community and a network is that you belong to a community, but a network belongs to you." 
Zygmund Bauman - as quoted in El Pais, Jan '12

The Network Epochs

  • Mobility & Transportation Networks
  • Analog Communications (telegraph / phone / TV)
  • The commercial Internet
  • Internet + Social Graph (the dawn of Facebook)
  • Internet + Social Graph + Algorithms (the dominance of Facebook)
  • What’s next?

Additional sources referenced in the show:
"The Seventh Sense" - Joshua Cooper Ramo
"Network Science" - Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
"The Square and the Tower" - Niall Ferguson
 "Mother Earth, Motherboard", Wired - Neal Stephenson 
"The Hype Machine" - Sinan Aral
"Fixing the Social Media Crisis" - Exponential View podcast host Azeem Azhar interviews Sinan Aral
"Connected" - Nicholas Christakis, James Fowler
"Change" - Damon Centola