Rating: 
Summary: Barabasi vs. Wolfram
Review: Having read both "Linked" and "A New Kind of Science" I feel compelled to add my two cents to some other reviewer who unfavorably compares Barabasi to Wolfram.While it is true that Linked is a bit light on the underlying math - not trivial by all means - and that there are chapters the book would be better without (last three notably, as well as the already-mentioned analysis of M$ dominance) this remains an interesting introduction to networks theory. We do not need rocket science to tell us that a scale-free network has its' vulnerability in its hubs, but I find it interesting and not entirely common sense that it is INHERENTLY more robust than a random network. I find some of the critique here a bit petty (perhaps penned by fellow scientists ?). Barabasi comes out IMHO as a witted scientist with a knack for explaining stuff to the masses, an art in which Richard Feynman (alredy mentioned here and perhaps my all-time favorite hero) excelled. Perhaps a 100-page compendium would make a better reading, but there seems to be an unwritten publishing rule whereby no essay shorter than 250 pages sells. On the other hand, I have rarely witnessed such an inflated ego as the one self-portrayed by Stephen Wolfram who bombastically claims to have invented a whole New Kind of Science ! His 1,200-page tome uses all variations of the "I" pronoun *ad nauseam* and there are whole sections who could be happily burned to no consequence to the reader (e.g. the proof-free wanderings on biochemistry et al.), not to mention the gazillion diagrams which cease to astonish well before you peruse the fiftieth.
Rating: 
Summary: Networks at work
Review: In my opinion, Barabasi's book is a decent addition to the existing books on complexity and networks. The author himself is an acknowledged authority of the field of networks. I disagree with some previous critiques that suggest that the book is empty. The book in fact covers a lot of material with just enough technical detail that a layman can understand. The author is able to explain well how various networks form, work, how they fail etc., bringing examples from a wide variety of fields. The text itself is easily readable and provides the reader a good and intuitive understanding of networks without essentially resorting to the language of mathematics which is exactly what Richard Feynman does in his famous book "The character of physical law". If anybody tried to do this, this is not at all an easy task and hence I consider it a nice achievement. Just to mention one particular example, I have not seen such a crystal clear explanation of the strange and somewhat mystic "power law" distribution that shows up in virtually all complex systems and which most books fail to communicate to the public. So if you are looking for an entertaining book which also provides a good and easy introduction into networks at work, you should read it.
Rating: 
Summary: A very poor book
Review: Prologue:
How come there is no 0 or negative choice
for the rating? I did NOT want to choose 1 star,
but -5 stars. Review:
Writing a popular science book is not as trivial as one
might think. Here is a (minimal) set of rules:
* FIRST and foremost, the author must know the field well
and must have contributed to it substantially.
* SECOND, the author must know how to address to the general
public in an honest, scientific way.
* THIRD (and most evidently), the book must be written in a
language that can be understood by the layman, but, not necessarily,
completely effortlessly.
* FOURTH, it is important that the author's primary target
be not that he/she try to make the reader "feel good" only
(if people can be made to believe that they understand
something totally outside their field of expertise,
then they feel good about themselves, but, feeling good
without learning anything is a waste of time;
why not go hiking instead?)
* FIFTH, the author should remain humble about his/her
achievements, for there is no purpose in boasting about
them to the general public. Unfortunately, the author, A.-L. Barabasi, miserably
fails in all of them:
* FIRST, it appears that his contributions (as far as one
can tell by reading his papers) are minimal.
* SECOND, the exposition of the subject is not honest,
because he hides the complexity, substituting it instead
by a tremendous amount of repetition.
* THIRD, while it is true that the book can be understood
by everyone, the fact that it can be done while taking
a nap (i.e., effortlessly) should be an indication of
its emptiness.
* FOURTH, alas, the only outcome of reading this book
is that the reader feels good. (See multi-star reviews below.)
* FIFTH, the author never fails to seize the opportunity
to tell the reader of his accomplishments. Incidentally, a book that marvelously complies to the
above rules is "The Character of Physical Law" by
Richard Feynman, as well as--at a more technical level--his
Lectures on Physics. Let me conclude the review by giving another network for
which the degree of a node is a super-duper heavy-tailed
variable: Consider as nodes the people on this planet,
living or dead, and link two of them if they have the same
first name (ignoring variants due to language transformations,
e.g., John, Johann, Johannes, Ivan, Ioannis, etc. are
considered the same). This is a truly small world.
So small, that, for example, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
is at distance one from Albert Einstein. I wonder how come the author failed to notice this example
and create yet another chapter (or "link"). He has my permission to use this idea
in the next edition of his book.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book to find out about pseudoscience
Review: Popular science sells, no doubt about it. Authors like Barabasi
know how to exploit the science-thirsty public in the following way: their writing appeals to many people, ranging from pseudo-mathematicians to readers of Foreign Review, by making them believe that they understand some deep new phenomena. Undoubtedly, the average reader will not search the bibliography to discover that many of the papers cited in this book, including Barabasis's papers, are scientifically and mathematically empty. While it is true that some of the models described in this book can LEAD to interesting science and mathematics, the author does not have the skills to do so.
The author and his collaborators just OBSERVE certain phenomena
and come up with simple models, which they are unable to analyze
mathematically. Instead, they perform simulations and experiments. The book impresses the reader by supposedly showing
connections between modern physics and networks. Read the chapter
on the Bose Einstein condensation and its role to the Microsoft
domination in the software market and, if you know something
about both subjects, you will laugh your heart out at the author's naivete. Why does the author not try to do serious physics but, rather, attempts to deal with a subject like this?
Because it is a quick path to fame. He merely sells science to non-scientists, in a rude, awckward, non-scientific, impolite,
self-promoting manner. He basically insults the average reader's intellectual ability. The contents of the book can be summarized
in at most 10 pages. The story is repetitive. To be sure [sic],
Barabasi uses an eloquent language and hides repetition under the rug. Check some of the papers cited in the book. Check, e.g.,
the paper of Faloutsos et al., to see that the authors of this--allegedly important article--did not observe that two of the functions they estimated are inverses of one another and hence there was no need to perform the experiment anew. (Either Barabasi did not read the paper or he did not understand the
math in it... Yet he did cite it.) I mostly like the chapter where the author concludes that in order to attack a network you really need to attack its hubs. Let's get serious now. Do you need Quantum Statistics to predict that? Well, sorry, if a funding agency is willing to fund research that results in such
conclusions, then, I regret to say, public funds are going down the drain. It's not the first nor the last time this happens.
But, to be sure [sic], Barabasi is grinning while reading my review: he surely knows that no matter what I say he remains firm in his sand-castle kingdom; he knows that my review is irrelevant and that the readers of his book, the students of his classes, the program directors of his funding agencies, and the general public are closing their ears.
Rating:
Summary: Get & Read It -You will never view the world the same again
Review: Barabasi does a great job with his latest work. If you want to get up to speed in understanding what it means to be 'netCentric' then this book is for you. "Linked" really shows that one needs to think differently if one wants to transform their organization. After reading this book, your perspective will be different, and you will be able to capitalize on opportunities once missed - it is absolutely amazing. "Linked" stimulated me to write a whitepaper "Becoming NetCentric" linking communities of interests (COI), architectures and ontologies....
Thank you very much Albert.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but somewhat dissapointing
Review: Barabasi gives an interesting account of what he and others have done in recent years in the field of networks. However, one thing I would've liked to see more of is the mathematics behind these ideas. Maybe it is because the book is intended for more of a general audience and not a hardcore science/math audience that Barabasi left the majority of mathematics out. He does include some when he discusses how the networks he has been dealing with follow power laws, but I would've liked to see more. I do think that the book has a nice flowing style and is easy to read. If you want an introduction to some of the current ideas about networks given in a non-technical way, then this is a good book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Dimensions and Implications of Global Interconnectedness
Review: Frankly, I found this to be an unusually challenging book to read the first time and therefore re-read it before organizing my thoughts for this review. The Five Star rating correctly indicates my high regard for what Barabasi has accomplished as he attempts to help his reader to think in terms of networks in new and different (probably unfamiliar) ways. His book "is about how networks emerge, what they look like, and how they evolve." With meticulous care, he presents "a Web-based view of nature, society, and business, a new framework for understanding issues ranging from democracy on the Web to vulnerability of the Internet and the spread of deadly viruses." Along the way, Barabasi challenges the concept of "The Random Universe," asserting instead that everything is connected to everything else. He devotes most of his book to explaining the significance of that global interconnectedness to business, science, and everyday life. As a non-scientist, I am unqualified to comment on much of the material which Barabasi shares. Perhaps he wrote this book for non-scientists such as I who nonetheless struggle to understand what Barabasi characterizes as the "mystery of life" which begins with the intricate web of interactions and thereby integrates the millions of molecules within each organism. "The enigma of the society starts with the convoluted structure of the social network....[For that reason] networks are the prerequisite for describing any complex system, indicating that complexity theory must inevitably stand on the shoulders of network theory. It is tempting to step in the footsteps of some of my predecessors and predict whether and when we will tame complexity." Given all that has been accomplished thus far with regard to disentangling the networks following the discovery of scale-free networks, Barabasi concludes, "Once we stumble across the right vision of complexity, it will take little to bring it to fruition. When [in italics] that will happen is one of the mysteries that keeps many of us going." Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Mark Buchanan's Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, Stanley Kaufman's At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity as well as The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, Steven Strogatz' Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order, Duncan J. Watts' Six Degrees: the Science of a Connected Age, and Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. I probably should add Ed Regis' The Info Mesa: Science, Business, and the New Alchemy on the Santa Fe Plateau. Regis devotes almost all of his attention to individuals and events who and which, over several decades, had a profound impact on essentially the same subjects as those discussed in the books previously recommended. Also, Regis examines in much greater detail than do the other authors how core concepts about networks and their complexity were introduced to the commercial marketplace by various entrepreneurs.
Rating: 
Summary: Repetitive, obnoxious
Review: I am a computer engineer. I know this is a general audience pop-sci book, but it was too watered down. I would have been better off reading a short research paper on the subject. All the author seemed to write about was his jet-hopping and his good ol' boys club of researchers. I'm surprised he didn't advertise Albert TV: the webcam--see me at my desk, writing my next book...about...myself! Much of the scientific writing was repetitive--as if he were trying to fulfill a publisher's page quota. Maybe I've just been exposed to the topic before, but most of the concepts seemed to be common sense. If you remove the hub in a star network, it will go down. REALLY!?! I smell Nobel and Pulitzer! In summary, a grand display of hubris, speckeled with a few easily-digestible facts amid a sea of repetition.
Rating:
Summary: Applicable to Al Qaeda, SARS, and Getting a Job
Review: Linked traces the developers and development of network theory from 1929 to 2002. Barabasi uniquely combines a sense of the theorist as a person and a personality with a summary of the theory they developed and the constraints it overturned. He also applies these theories to diverse areas from cellular biology to corporate boardrooms and Asian financial markets. It's easy to see how this book is applicable to Al Qaeda and the current SARS epidemic as well as to your own approach to work. For example, in Chapter 4: Small Worlds, Barabasi relates the Strength of Weak Ties theory of Granovetter that in finding a job "our weak social ties are more important than our cherished strong friendships." The most suprising thing about the book is that Barabasi takes a rather boring, paradoxically isolated area of dry intellectual inquiry and manages to convey how exciting and applicable network theory is to everyday life.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: For casual readers, this book is a wonderful book to spawn new ideas of networks and networking. Although the latter half is weaker in my perspective, I think this is a great book and has contributed greatly to my understanding of how certain things can be linked together and how certain connections can make the passage of information or the ability to do something more effective. A great book.
|
