Product Description

A cocktail party. A terrorist cell. Ancient bacteria. An international conglomerate.

All are networks, and all are a part of a surprising scientific revolution. Albert-László Barabási, the nation's foremost expert in the new science of networks, takes us on an intellectual adventure to prove that social networks, corporations, and living organisms are more similar than previously thought. Grasping a full understanding of network science will someday allow us to design blue-chip businesses, stop the outbreak of deadly diseases, and influence the exchange of ideas and information. Just as James Gleick brought the discovery of chaos theory to the general public, Linked tells the story of the true science of the future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7146 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-29
• Released on: 2003-04-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.com Review
How is the human brain like the AIDS epidemic? Ask physicist Albert-László Barabási and he'll explain them both in terms of networks of individual nodes connected via complex but understandable relationships. Linked: The New Science of Networks is his bright, accessible guide to the fundamentals underlying neurology, epidemiology, Internet traffic, and many other fields united by complexity.

Barabási's gift for concrete, nonmathematical explanations and penchant for eccentric humor would make the book thoroughly enjoyable even if the content weren't engaging. But the results of Barabási's research into the behavior of networks are deeply compelling. Not all networks are created equal, he says, and he shows how even fairly robust systems like the Internet could be crippled by taking out a few super-connected nodes, or hubs. His mathematical descriptions of this behavior are helping doctors, programmers, and security professionals design systems better suited to their needs. Linked presents the next step in complexity theory--from understanding chaos to practical applications. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
Information, disease, knowledge and just about everything else is disseminated through a complex series of networks made up of interconnected hubs, argues University of Notre Dame physics professor Barabasi. These networks are replicated in every facet of human life: "There is a path between any two neurons in our brain, between any two companies in the world, between any two chemicals in our body. Nothing is excluded from this highly interconnected web of life." In accessible prose, Barabasi guides readers through the mathematical foundation of these networks. He shows how they operate on the Power Law, the notion that "a few large events carry most of the action." The Web, for example, is "dominated by a few very highly connected nodes, or hubs... such as Yahoo! or Amazon.com." Barabasi notes that "the fittest node will inevitably grow to become the biggest hub." The elegance and efficiency of these structures also makes them easy to infiltrate and sabotage; Barabasi looks at modern society's vulnerability to terrorism, and at the networks formed by terrorist groups themselves. The book also gives readers a historical overview on the study of networks, which goes back to 18th-century Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler and includes the well-known "six degrees phenomenon" developed in 1967 by sociology professor Stanley Milgram. The book may remind readers of Steven Johnson's Emergence and with its emphasis on the mathematical underpinnings of social behavior Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point (which Barabasi discusses); those who haven't yet had their fill of this new subgenre should be interested in Barabasi's lively and ambitious account.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Highlighted in Mark Buchanan's Nexus [BKL My 1 02] as a key researcher on networks, Barabasi here talks about his work in more detail. In an anecdotal narrative, he traces networks' mathematical parentage back to Leonhard Euler and the late Paul Erdos, two biographically as well as mathematically interesting geniuses. They set a foundation called graph theory, on which some sociologists in the late 1960s and early 1970s built ideas of how a social network functions; the phrase "six degrees of separation" arose out of their work. Amusing readers with what helped boost that phrase into general circulation--a Web site that calculates the movie-credit connections between Kevin Bacon and any other Hollywood actor--Barabasi then shifts to his own fascinating studies of the Web. His research group found that its domination by hub sites like Hotmail or Yahoo adheres to a graphical relation called the "power law." Limning this property in contexts such as Vernon Jordan's links among corporate boards, Barabasi imparts the central concepts of networks. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Great read
Nutshell review - This is such a fascinating topic and this is a great book covering it. Well written, lucid and worth reading about this interesting "new" field of networks and small worlds.

Another book on the same topic, Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks by Mark Buchanan, covers the same topic. No need to buy both.

Excellent book for beginners & engineers alike
This is an excellent introduction to the science of networks. The layman, the engineer and the beginnig researcher should all enjoy & benefit from reading it.

Good way to start
This well-written, easy book is a good way to start learning about network theory. It discusses the history, some basics, and the broad application (or presence?) of networks in the world around us.
However, it skims only the surface of what the research is all about, and leaves one thirsty for more, making it a good introduction to further studying (in my case, neural networks).

The writing style is close to story-telling at times, and this got a bit on my nerves. Apart from that I really cannot say anything bad about this book, I am glad I purchased it.