Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (Open Market...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 368 pages
• Published by: W. W. Norton & Company February 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0393325423
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0393325423
• Book Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 13.6 ounces

Product Review
You may be only six degrees away from Kevin Bacon, but would he let you borrow his car? It depends on the structures within the network that links you. When the power goes out, when we find that a stranger knows someone we know, when dot-com stocks soar in price, networks are evident. In Six Degrees, sociologist Duncan Watts looks at networks like these: what they are, how they're being studied, and what we can use them for. To illustrate the often complicated mathematics that describe such structures, Watts uses plenty of examples from life, without which this book would quickly move beyond a general science readership. Small chapters make each thought-provoking conclusion easy to swallow, though some are hard to digest. For instance, in a short bit on "coercive externalities," Watts sums up sociological research showing that:

"Conversations concerning politics displayed a consistent pattern . On election day, the strongest predictor of electoral success was not which party an individual privately supported but which party he or she expected would win."

Six Degrees attempts to help readers understand the new and exciting field of networks and complexity. While considerably more demanding than a general book like The Tipping Point, it offers readers a snapshot of a riveting moment in science, when understanding things like disease epidemics and the stock market seems almost within our reach. --Therese Littleton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Watts, a Columbia University sociology professor, combines his own research in network theory with summaries of the work of others who he says are "collectively solving problems which cannot be solved by any single individual or even any single discipline." The result is a dizzyingly complex blend of mathematics, computer science, biology and social theory that, despite the best efforts at clarification, often remains opaque, buried in scientific language and graphs. The book also assumes a high level of unfamiliarity on the reader's part with the subject, treating phenomena like the 17th-century tulip craze or the "Kevin Bacon game" as fresh news. Even more surprising, however, are the significant omissions- there is not a single mention of "tipping points," for example, the subject of a recent bestselling book. The parts of the book dealing with the author's own research are strong on science, but frustratingly vague on the social network of scientists with whom Watts has worked. There are intermittent highlights in the scientific account, such as an explanation of why casual acquaintances are more likely to provide life-changing opportunities than best friends, or a look at how New York City's reaction to September 11 illustrates current thinking on network connectivity and disruption, but, despite an admirable effort to syncretize discoveries in several fields, the book as a whole is too dry to compete effectively with the popularized accounts that exist for each separate field. Illus.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (Hardcover) If you haven't read anything about networks and imagine setting out on an academic career, joining Duncan on his network adventure might be a great deal of fun. Duncan starts his book with his arrival at college and gives us a blow-by-blow recap of his ups and downs while enjoying a life in graduate school. You have to get past reviews, you have to get published, you have to find post-doc positions, you have to find people to co-author papers. The goal of all this was a little hard to discern. Was he working towards a tenured position in a major university? Was he trying to solve a specific problem? Was he trying to teach us something about networks? We never find out. The story ends with a curiously brief and fuzzy recap of his latest work. Well, that's how diaries generally end. It's not my favorite kind of book. I am interested in network theory, not the outcome of a walk in the park with professor X. I didn't care if Barbasi published a solution before Duncan thought up the question. At some levels, I simply disagreed with Duncan. He seems quite comfortable with 'Blank Slate' notions of human nature, which seems entirely silly to me. His focus on getting an idea published first depressed me. Stories about who is 'first' are important to sports fans, lawyers and professors. Sports fans simply enjoy the thrill of the race. Lawyers use a court to establish who is 'first' to steal the ideas of less legally minded inventors. Professors fight over who is first to win tenure and long sabbaticals. In the real world, most ideas get conjured up over and over, again. That's what happens in networks. A much more complete and concise science of networks, see 'Netwar'. For a much better understanding of the linguistic difficulties, see 'Biographies of Scientific Objects'. Comment | | (Report this)