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