[Previous entry: "T-Shirt"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "innovation"]

10/17/2004 Archived Entry: "Six Degrees"

Six Degrees
Reading Duncan Watts' Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. One of the interesting tropes circulated throughout the text is how the network causes failure and spreads a given virus (at least up to where I am right now). These are just examples Watts draws on to make his understandings of networks more concrete. But I’m drawn to their negative emphasis.
The positive attributes we might see associated with networks (knowledge distribution, democracy) are not subjects of interest to Watts. Instead, how do systems fail?
Burroughs' virus comes immediately to mind. But I'm also thinking of how various listserv threads become sites of networked failure regarding all kinds of pedagogical issues. Plagiarism is one such place. This meme spreads out throughout the network repeatedly like a Melissa virus. Watts notes that if only Microsoft adopted the incompatible rather than the compatible model, its role in the network of viruses would drastically reduce. Maybe the same could be said for the listserv failure. The desire for compatibility no doubt contributes to the spread of failed ideas (Our ideas must mesh/must be the same/must be reproducible/most agree with most other ideas). Even recently on WPA-L, with the request for Turnitin.com look-alikes we see the failure back in the network. Those responses which intend to make the system less compatible (i.e. those who dismiss the notion of using any such system at all) cannot stop the virus from spreading from post to post to post to post....That is not a compatible response/it serves little purpose in the composition system of networked ideas.
But this is just one example. The more serious examples are ideological (not that plagiarism isn’t ideological…)