Ming the MechanicAn old rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open, free and exciting is waking up.Laws of social networks- July 6, 2008 There are a few "laws" that typically are brought up when one discusses networks, particularly online social networks. They show a progression of different kinds of networks. They're not rules and they're not natural laws, but they're an abstraction of observations smart people have made about different types of networks.First there's Sarnoff's Law. David Sarnoff was a big name in radio broadcasting. Around 1930 he formulated a law that said, essentially:The value of a network is proportional...http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-001930.htm Self-Organized Criticality- July 5, 2008 Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) is a theory about some principles that seem to pervade nature and which seems to explain various kinds of complexity very well. One of the most clear explanations is found in the book How Nature Works, by Per Bak, a Danish theoretical physicist who had an important role in developing the theory.SOC has been applied within a great number of disciplines, but it seems to remain a controversial subject for many scientists. You can guess that from looking at the...http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-001929.htm |