NYC Bloggers

Searching for Internet topologies I found this interesting concept of mapping a virtual existence in a physical geography. NYC Bloggers visually maps the presence of bloggers in the city of New York organising them by subway stops. You can zoom in several layers in each borough and find a listing of all blogs in that area. So far there are 3546 indexed blogs. Join freely at NYC Bloggers.

Barabasi in Portugal

To my astonishing surprise I found out that one of the key thinkers Iâ??ve been reading and studying in the past weeks will be here in Portugal for an International Conference in the â??Science of Complex Networks: from Biology to the Internet and WWWâ??. Albert â?? LászlÃ3 Barabási is a Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame and directs research on complex networks. His work has been featured in most major scientific and commercial media, including Science and The New York Times. The International Conference will be held in the city of Aveiro in the University of Aveiro, and you can find more information on the following links:

Conference Homepage
Conference Poster

Silk Road

The other day I was reading a few articles regarding the initial spread of Black Death in medieval Europe and the importance of the Silk Road in its dispersal. The analogies with contemporary diseases are somehow evident. Can the Silk Road, a major transportation/communication path between Asia and Europe in medieval times and throughout centuries, be compared to a modern-day air connection between any two major international airports? In other words, the Silk Road was as much an important factor for the dissemination of the Black Death, originated in Asia, as the air connection between Hong Kong and Dublin was for the spread of SARS. Contemporary international airports usually belong to large hubs of social network, the city itself, and are usually the biggest link of interactions between any two of these large hubs. Nowadays airports are critical segments in the spreading of any human disease, such as routers in any computer virus. The bigger they are the larger the number of links, the higher the probability of dissemination. These significant pathways should be important objects of study.

Network Topologies

Paul Baran's Networks copyright Paul Baran

Internet pioneer Paul Baranâ??s suggestion of three possible network structures for the Internet. He suggested the mesh-like structure of what he denominated a distributed network, since it was less vulnerable to potential attacks.

Protein Network copyright Macmillan Magazines Ltd. (from the Barabasi article at Nature Magazine)

Yeast protein interaction network - A map of protein-protein interactions in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Motif Clusters copyright Macmillan Magazines Ltd. / Albert Barabasi (from the Barabasi article at Nature Magazine)

Network Models copyright Macmillan Magazines Ltd. / Albert Barabasi (from the Barabasi article at Nature Magazine)

Patterns of Dissemination

Iâ??m currently interested in several topics that can be constrained by the ever-present area of information mapping/architecture or the MFADT concept of dataspaces. Self-organization and bottom-up behaviour in complex and emergent systems are some of the concepts that have been in my mind in the last weeks. The analysis of complex networks is something of great interest to me, particularly the study of patterns of dissemination within a specific network. The path and duration of a certain fad, idea, virus or disease, in a human/biological/social or computer/digital network is a critical point of awareness at the moment, as any kind of order that might emerge from disorder/complexity. Iâ??ve been reading the work of some authors on these topics such as: Albert LászlÃ3 Barabási, Steven Johnson, Zoltán Nagy Oltvai, Malcolm Gladwell, Hawoong Jeong, among others.

Domains of Interest

The following list of domains is still very broad and even if Iâ??m already inclined for just a few, I think my mindset, at least for now, runs loose in all of them. Nonetheless, a major frame connects and oversees all domains â?? Information Architecture.

> Artificial Intelligence (genetic algorithms, neural networks)
> Artificial Life
> Cyber Biology
> Genetics (DNA, cell behaviour)
> Virology (Biological Viruses VS Computer Viruses)
> Epidemiology
> Complex Networks
> Cognitive Science
> Pattern Recognition
> Game Theory
> Strategy
> Emergent Systems (bottom-up organization)
> Self-organizing Systems

Recently Acquired Books:

> Linked: Ho w Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science and Everyday Life (see detail)
> Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (see detail)
> Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We C reate and Communicate (see detail)
> The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought (see detail)
> The Laws of the Web : Patterns in the Ecology of Information (see detail)
> The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (see detail)
> Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems (see detail)