Up to this point, probably the most intriguing ideas in networks is how we affect those around us, but more importantly how they fundamentally affect our lives. This is the main concept that Christakis kept examining in his book. That sometimes it’s not who we are or who we know are, but rather it’s the connections between all of that and our location in the resulting network. I grew up in Saudi Arabia, where I had my family divided between three main branches so to speak. The East, middle and west parts of the country. So, I naturally had to travel extensively between these three parts to in part to make everyone happy and keep with cultural/religious traditions of close family ties and partly just because I was able to ( i.e. free transportation/housing!). While going back and forth over the year there were very interesting and distinctive patterns between all the three regions. The eastern region, and specifically where I live with my father is a place where two main things stand out. Aramco (the world’ largest oil company), and KFUPM (a very highly selective and prestigious technical university). The situation in the middle and the west is not similar ( i.e. nothing really stands out). Up to this day I’m yet to find a satisfactory answer to the following phenomenon, that I keep witnessing every year. When I graduated from high school, almost my entire class (300+ kids), went to the same university KFUPM (my school was an above average school so most students were able to gain admission to KFUPM). At KFUPM, almost all of them (75%), and that’s just from the people I know and through Facebook chose one major, chemical engineering. Now there are defiantly many factors in why they choose both KFUPM (over all the other schools in the region and the country), and chemical engineering (over all the other majors). These might include, their ability (not interest ) to do so, the promise of good jobs, lack of knowledge of other options (most of us had no clue) and so on. But looking at it from a network point of view makes a more persuasive case. KFUPM was created roughly right after Aramco to serve its needs. From nothing the whole region grew bit by bit, and a special community (which I was born to) was created around the school and the company. Over the years it became a network of generations of parents and children. You grow up surrounded by most people who work in Aramco, and their children study with you. When it’s time for you to make a decision, the first place you look into is your network, and that decides where to go. The choice of major diffuses through the network every year for one reason or the other (one year it’s all mechanical, the other petroleum, and so on), and soon the majority are following in step. What still puzzles me is that I often ask people why did you choose “chemical engineering” and I’m yet to hear an expected answer at least here in the US such as “I’m good at chemistry,” or “I enjoy science”, and so forth. Instead, you will literally hear, “that’s what everyone is doing this year.” They don’t want to stand out, or be outsiders in a weird way. I realize this needs much more analysis and examining other variables, but I just think it’s really interesting how our networks simply decides our majors, and plans our lives for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment