New York; London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. —384 p. — ISBN10: 0393325423; ISBN13: 978-0393325423
'Six degrees of separation' is a cliche, as is 'it's a small world', both cliches of the language and cliches of everyday experience. But it's also an intriguing idea with a long history and some surprising implications. We all live in tightly bonded social networks, yet linked to vast numbers of people more closely than we sometimes think. Scientists have begun to apply insights from the theoretical study of networks to understand forms as superficially different as social networks and electrical networks, computer networks and economic networks, and to show how common principles underlie them all. Duncan J. Watts explores the science of networks and its implications, ranging from the Dutch tulipmania of the seventeenth century, the success of Harry Potter, the impact of September 11th on Manhattan, to the structure of the World Wide Web.
The Connected AgeEmergence
Networks
Synchrony
The Road Less Traveled
The Small-World Problem
The Origins Of A “New” ScienceThe Theory Of Random Graphs
Social Networks
The Dynamics Matters
Departing From Randomness
Here Come The Physicists…
Small WorldsWith A Little Help From My Friends
From Cavemen To Solarians
Small Worlds
As Simple As Possible
The Real World
Beyond The Small WorldScale-Free Networks
The Rich Get Richer
Getting Rich Can Be Hard
Reintroducing Group Structure
Affiliation Networks
Directors And Scientists
Complications
Search In NetworksSo What Did Milgram Really Show?
Is Six A Big Or A Small Number?
The Small-World Search Proble
Sociology Strikes Back
Search In Peer-To-Peer Networks
Epidemics And FailuresThe Hot Zone
Viruses In The Internet
The Mathematics Of Epidemics
Epidemics In A Small World
Percolation Models Of Disease
Networks, Viruses, And Microsoft
Failures And Robustness
Decisions, Delusions, And The Madness Of CrowdsTulip Economics
Fear, Greed, And Rationality
Collective Decisions
Information Cascades
Information Externalities
Coercive Externalities
Market Externalities
Coordination Externalities
Social Decision Making
Thresholds, Cascades, And PredictabilityThreshold Models Of Decisions
Capturing Differences
Cascades In Social Networks
Cascades And Percolation
Phase Transitions And Cascades
Crossing The Chasm
A Nonlinear View Of History
Power To The People
Robustness Revisited
Innovation, Adaptation, And RecoveryThe Toyota-Aisin Crisis
Markets And Hierarchies
Industrial Divides
Ambiguity
The Third Way
Coping With Ambiguity
Multiscale Networks
Recovering From Disaster
The End Of The BeginningSeptember 11
Lessons For A Connected Age
The World Gets Smaller: Another Year In The Connected AgeFurther Reading