(OLR) Topic 10 Special topic: Complexity and Social Networks

1. Who is following who? B, C & D are following A in a conversation started by A on the Blue Ning. D has followed A, B, & C and C has followed D, A & B
2. The pattern that has emerged is a very even one. Each person has spoken or followed each other person once and this has occurred in an even distribution. The number of interactions is even between nodes..
3. If you were to repeat this analysis on another set of blogs from another POD, would you find the same patterns?

I might expect to see this pattern repeated in another group of blogs that were similarly arranged around a set task requiring equal effort / participation from all members / nodes. Beyond this I would not expect to find this pattern repeated because the variables that influence the selection of whom to follow in the nodes of a given blogosphere would be subject to quite random and unpredictable variables. For example. A blogger does nothing for weeks of a project and then starts blogging prolifically to catch up. People either start to respond to this node or not.

Of course equilibrium should be considered. Even in an unpredictable blogosphere certain sustainable patterns would have to emerge: otherwise one would predict that everyone stops blogging or a strong relationship emerges between two bloggers (or a similar small core) whilst other bloggers follow intermittently and are in turn perhaps followed by other, downstream bloggers.

I think that my understanding is consistent with what Kirshbaum refers to as a traditional reductionist approach that attempts to summarize the dynamics, processes, and change that has occurred in terms of lowest common denominators and the simplest, yet most widely provable and applicable elegant explanations. This sounds good but it isn’t - Kirshbaum continues to say that powerful computers all insights that complexity yields without simplification or reduction. This reminds me of fractals and the idea that even in complex - seemingly unpredictable interactions emergent patterns will begin to exhibit fundamental properties (Hallinan, 2005).

Michael Crichton has a field day with these ideas by creating a fictional alter ego (Ian Malcolm a Mathematician in Jurassic Park) who draws out the idea of early patterns in a complex system being unrecognizable but later iterations make things clearer (by about page 500 usually!). This is a common theme in much of Crichton’s work. I mention it because as an author, Crichton usually dealt with the idea that people fundamentally fail to understand complex human made systems. The blogosphere is a good example of a complex human made system. Authors like Hallinan really draw out the idea that such complex systems can exhibit emergent qualities and these qualities are more than the sum of their parts.

Hallinan, J (2005). Introduction to complex systems

Kirshbaum, D, 2002, Introduction to Complex Systems