The Networked Society

I am pleased to introduce the "The Networked Society" blog. This blog is grounded in a class at Northeastern by the same name. This is a class about our personal and societal networks, with a bit of stuff around the impact and evolution of modern information and communication technologies (ICT). This blog is an experiment of sorts, where the intuition is that modern ICTs create a naturally blurring of boundaries, because information, identities, etc, naturally tend to flow from one context from another. One of the conundrums of the 21st century is how to manage this blurring, because often we want to block that information diffusion (e.g., perhaps this is why my oldest daughter will not accept my friending on Facebook). But there are also opportunities to enable discussions that would have been impossible just a few years ago, and the objective of tihs blog is to purposely blur the boundary between this class and the rest of the world-- this blog literally makes it possible for anyone in the world to participate in the course discussion.


How's this going to work? I (David Lazer) am going to post the sections of the syllabus currently being discussed in our class, with occasional commentary, and my students will also regularly post. And for any readers who happen to come across this, please feel to join in.


The first readings, which provide some motivation and overview for the importance of thinking of the world in terms of networks, are below:


Christakis and Fowler: Chapter 1 (available at): http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/LITTLems/ CHRISTAKIS_AND_FOWLER_0316036145._V234762121_.pdf Easley and Kleinberg, Chapter 1: Overview http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/networks-book-ch01.pdf Gladwell, M. (1996). The tipping point. The New Yorker http://www.gladwell.com/pdf/tipping.pdf Listen to: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_influence_of_social_networks.html