Rating: 
Summary: Definitely a monumental work
Review: I enjoyed reading this book and recommend it higly to anyone who would like to know why this "world" is so small. I completely disagree with one reviewer in his comments that the author of this book suffers from the self-importance exultance syndrom. Yes, we have all suffered from the annoyance "larger than life" figures that some authers try to impose on us while we have been looking the hidden beef. But, not in this case. In fact, I feel the presentation is thoughtful and humble. Moreover, the writing is elegant, lucid and crisp. The book gives a clear picture of an imprtant emerging field, provides the background of where it came from, and give a vision of how it may evolve. I cannot but admire the creativity, diligence and the vision of the author. Putting down the book, I can still hear the echo of the gasp the auther uttered, "How did we miss that?" How can this not be a good read?
Rating: 
Summary: Well written, but low on content
Review: I found this book very entertaining and interesting to read. Watts surely excels at presenting his work to as to make it appealing to large non-technical audiences. However, I happen to have a technical background, and while I cannot comment on the sociological value of the results of this new "science of networks," it seems fairly clear that there are no hard results of any significance in this work.
Watts claims to be a mathematician, but all he seems to have done is to construct some simple mathematical models and run computer simulations on these. What's wrong with that, you ask? Well, that is just... how should I put it delicately.. trivial work. No mathematics department would let him get away with a PhD for this... which doesn't really mean anything in and of itself, but this was all the book, written by a self-proclaimed mathematician, has in terms of hard facts or rigorous results. There's a lot of discussion and speculation and interpretation, which is all very interesting, but very little scientifically rigorous original work of any value.
I noticed some other reviewers saying that this is not an easy read, but is worth the effort. I'm not being the least bit snobbish or arrogant about this, but I found the book fairly easy to read (as would anyone with some knowledge of mathematics), and wouldn't advise any laypeople to waste their time. Don't bother following Watts' intellectual travels as a researcher; it may not be easy to read, but there's not much there anyway.
I haven't said much about the actual content about the book, so here goes. Watts identifies the small world phenomenon, aka I can reach the president of the US through at most six steps, as occurring surprising frequently in the world around us. He sets out to understand the why and how of such a phenomenon. Now this is a rather hard problem to answer in a mathematical framework, because such real world networks are very difficult to model.
Watts and his PhD advisor evidently realized this, but went ahead and constructed some very simple models of such networks, and tried to analyze these models. So far so good. But even these simple models proved too hard to analyze mathematically, so they had to resort to running computer simulations, and explain the results in qualitative, rather than quantitative, terms. They made some interesting observations, but frankly, this ain't no work of genius, or anything close. Running simulations when one can't analyze a mathematical model is something all too many graduate students in various engineering disciplines do on a regular basis, but most of them don't have the gift of writing and finding the right audience that Watts does.
In my opinion, these toy models and simulations have nothing deep to say about anything in the real world. Further, in my opinion, this so called new science of networks, which seems to be attracting a fair bit of attention, will have absolutely nothing useful to contribute to any real world problems. In the words of Dennis Miller, that's just my opinion, and of course I could be wrong. But stay tuned, and we'll see.
Rating: 
Summary: I Liked It
Review: I picked up the book to get an introduction into social network theory. Unlike the other critics, I enjoyed the descriptions of his working relationships with others. The book provides good food for thought for the uninitiated, which includes me. I particularly liked his historical description of what was known prior to his research (graph theory, random graphs, Milgrams work). In particular, his use of contemporary events provided a foundation for understanding the significance to his work. I detected, and the author admits, that there were a few areas not fully substantiated yet. There was one aspect particularly exciting for me. As a Christian, I revisited the Book of Acts after reading this book. I thought about the fact that if Christ had lived the 12 apostles might not have dispersed - they would have remained clustered in one group. Their disbursement was crucial to the proliferation of a network and in a sense provides another form of validating the author's thoughts on thresholds and cascading effects. An incredible mind was certainly at work! I gave one start less than five, though, due to the author's tendency for age discrimination in the area of people doing graduate work. I started graduate school well into my forties. :-)
Rating:
Summary: I Liked It
Review: I picked up the book to get an introduction into social network theory. Unlike the other critics, I enjoyed the descriptions of his working relationships with others. The book provides good food for thought for the uninitiated, which includes me. I particularly liked his historical description of what was known prior to his research (graph theory, random graphs, Milgrams work). In particular, his use of contemporary events provided a foundation for understanding the significance to his work. I detected, and the author admits, that there were a few areas not fully substantiated yet. There was one aspect particularly exciting for me. As a Christian, I revisited the Book of Acts after reading this book. I thought about the fact that if Christ had lived the 12 apostles might not have dispersed - they would have remained clustered in one group. Their disbursement was crucial to the proliferation of a network and in a sense provides another form of validating the author's thoughts on thresholds and cascading effects. An incredible mind was certainly at work! I gave one start less than five, though, due to the author's tendency for age discrimination in the area of people doing graduate work. I started graduate school well into my forties. :-)
Rating: 
Summary: There's still much that we don't know
Review: I read this book because it received a favourable review in a Sci Fi magazine. It did not disappoint. For one, I finally learnt more about how the "6-degrees to Kevin Bacon" game works. Certain chapters could be rather heavy going though. But there's enough "layperson" content for this book to be useful to non-academics.
There's enough real-world examples written to keep me going. For instance, about how Ebola (biological virus) & Melissa (computer virus) spreads; an interesting story of the 1634 Dutch "Tulip Bubble" burst; of social experiments -- like this guy called Solomon Asch who proved that an individual starts having doubts when s/he is the minority, even though the majority's views are contrary to reality; how the Sept 11 incident "exposed the hidden connections in the complex archictecture of modern life"; a really intriuging case study of the Toyota-Aisin crisis of '97.
There's a useful reference list on recommended readings, ranked by the author based on level of readability (i.e. whether you need a background in Network Theory or not), so that's really helpful for further readings.
I would've liked it better if the book explained how one could really tap on the effect of "social contagion of ideas". But to be fair, it did say there's much work to be done, and the author does a credible job of explaining a complex theory for laypersons.
Rating:
Summary: So...how many degrees from Kevin Bacon?
Review: I've always been fascinated by social networks, having read Granovetter's work on strong vs. weak ties. As a career coach, I naturally talk to clients about the joys and frustrations of networking -- and I loved the movie "Six degrees of separation." If you're looking for an easy piece of entertainment, this is not the book for you. Watts shows how this field has advanced by combining research efforts in information science, physics, mathematics and sociology. We look over his shoulder as he collaborates with other scientists to solve tough problems -- and get a glimpse of modern science in action (although I think Watts emphasizes the more positive, cooperative aspects of "doing science"). Students of psychology will enjoy his discussion of Milgram's famous experiment -- messages mailed to a Boston stockbroker -- and the real, as compared to legendary, results. Milgram's even more outrageous obedience experiment, which Watts includes, also deserves a footnote: subjects refused to obey (a) when the experimenter broke the rules and gave reasons for the order and (b) when they were able to reconstruct their roles outside the laboratory. I began by borrowing this book from a library but realized that it needs to be owned. It's not a quick, one-time read. Although it's accessible, you have to pay attention and I found a need to read sequentially, from chapter to chapter. But if you read carefully, you'll change the way you look at the world. As other reviewers have noted, Watts shows how daily life is influenced by properties of networks: Why do some viruses, computer and biological, spread, and why others come to a quick halt? Why do airline hub-and-spoke networks often break down? How do computer searches work and what makes them effective? We're living in an increasingly connected world and this book will help us see and understand the connections more clearly. I think it's a must for anyone who wants to comprehend our world today.
Rating:
Summary: A student's diary
Review: If you haven't read anything about networks and imagine setting out on an academic career, joining Duncan on his network adventure might be a great deal of fun. Duncan starts his book with his arrival at college and gives us a blow-by-blow recap of his ups and downs while enjoying a life in graduate school. You have to get past reviews, you have to get published, you have to find post-doc positions, you have to find people to co-author papers. The goal of all this was a little hard to discern. Was he working towards a tenured position in a major university? Was he trying to solve a specific problem? Was he trying to teach us something about networks? We never find out. The story ends with a curiously brief and fuzzy recap of his latest work. Well, that's how diaries generally end. It's not my favorite kind of book. I am interested in network theory, not the outcome of a walk in the park with professor X. I didn't care if Barbasi published a solution before Duncan thought up the question. At some levels, I simply disagreed with Duncan. He seems quite comfortable with 'Blank Slate' notions of human nature, which seems entirely silly to me. His focus on getting an idea published first depressed me. Stories about who is 'first' are important to sports fans, lawyers and professors. Sports fans simply enjoy the thrill of the race. Lawyers use a court to establish who is 'first' to steal the ideas of less legally minded inventors. Professors fight over who is first to win tenure and long sabbaticals. In the real world, most ideas get conjured up over and over, again. That's what happens in networks. A much more complete and concise science of networks, see 'Netwar'. For a much better understanding of the linguistic difficulties, see 'Biographies of Scientific Objects'.
Rating:
Summary: Similar, even with differences
Review: In this age, when we are talking about crossing cultural boundaries and political differences, achieving economic equality and as such trying to establish one identity for ourselves, the book "Six Degrees : The science of a connected age" seems to be an interesting one. The author Dancan J. Watts have tried to fortify the fact that we already belong to the same social network and that we are already connected to each other, a realization to lead us more towards our goal of globalization.
We have definitely heard people saying that it is a small world and even uttered the sentence ourselves. Watts with his crisp writing and enough facts of groundbreaking experiments has substantiated the phenomenon of a connected age. Starting with an approach of Leonhard Eular to observe network as a mathematical object, watts shifts his focus to social psychologist perspective to view the same network. All over the book he has played with Stanley Milgram's hypothesis that `the world, viewed as an enormous network of social acquaintance, was in a certain sense "small"; that is any one person in the world could be reached through a network of friends in a only few steps'. If so, we - the inhabitants of world are indeed the members of a very large family. The families, organizations, groups of friends are all interconnected networks of the global network.
In this age of indifference, it is hard to observe the social bonding. But it again seems possible when Watts puts forward Mark Granovetter's idea of social coordination. According to Granovetter, social coordination does not arise from densely interlocking "strong ties". In practical almost all our social activities are contributed profoundly from our casual acquaintances. At this point we start realizing the bondage we have amongst us, representatives of different group, cult, race; holders of formal, informal and even no relationship to each other; similar or quite opposite to each other, but strangely enough, linked to each other.
Our links to each other set us in a system where we are strong and at the same time vulnerable to epidemics and as such failure. We have to share the failures or sufferings of an element or individual belonging to our social network by default, as much as we are sharing success. As on 11th September 2001, people had to share the misery of a political attack for being a part of the system, even though they had no direct contribution on the event. At the same time whole system recovered quickly from a massive breakdown, as it kept itself going on each other's strength , even if little was left behind.
In a social network people find their similarities even from differences, as indicated by watts "we have multiple independent ways of being alike". Regardless of our position in an organization, in a family, on the web, in a nation or in the world, we can sort out ways to link ourselves, to share success, to share pain. Watts clearly portrays this notion of belongingness in his book "Six Degrees".
Rating:
Summary: Uncertainly networked world
Review: Our world is narrower and people are closer to each other than ever before due to the development of a variety of transportation and telecommunications technologies. We can jet any foreign country within a few days. What is more surprising is the flow of information. The advent of Internet made it possible to access to global information with a series of clicks. We can be connected to each other through diverse network systems. Duncan J. Watts shows this well through his book, Six Degrees: the science of a connected age.
The author attempts to define our world as a complex network and develop simple mathematical models such as ¥á and ¥â to represent the dynamics of it and on it. What is intriguing in this book is that it shows interdisciplinary efforts to understand and explain small world phenomena, in which people can be connected within fewer steps than expected. The author could gain insight and develop his models through direct and indirect academic encounters with mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, and sociologists.
Furthermore, he tries to develop more plausible model through interaction between existing models and actual natural and social phenomena. Taking the contagion of disease such as AIDS/HIV, Ebola, and plague as examples, he introduces the concept of percolation and threshold. It is especially important that characteristics of a network can produce both robustness and weakness. For example, a network which has a few large clusters and a high degree of connectivity can be efficient in terms of information transmission, but it also has the risk of catastrophic contagion of diseases or computer viruses.
This book starts from general mathematical models of our world and ends with the difference and uncertainty in specific situations. We can be taught two points based on this process. First, the science of network is necessary to make a better understand of our world. People are still geographically separated and do not know most of others. But it is also true that individual people or actions can be connected sometimes to cause globally influential accidents. Behind these are invisible and intangible mechanisms of network system which depend on the specific network systems. The author argues that the science of network is required to understand those mechanisms rather than predict them. Second, the new science can be effective only if we take interdisciplinary perspective. That is shown well in the process which the author develop his model to understand our world.
It seems impossible that we make a perfectly accurate model of our connected world and devise network system with perfect robustness. Because of environmental uncertainty and ambiguity, there are always accidental factors. Still, we can do our best to make our systems as tolerant and flexible as possible. That is the way the science of network goes.
Rating:
Summary: six degrees?
Review: Six Degrees has been the only book that I¡¦ve been reading lately. It was the description of this book to me by a friend that caught my attention. Can I possibly be just 6 people away from any other person on the other side or the world? After I started reading it, the book sucked me right in, and I found this book quite different from other books in the same genera. Duncan J. Watts, the author of this book, unlike other specialists in their area who often take an absolute and definite view in their opinions, instead adapted a more humble attitude in his own works. He open questioned the possible flaws and mistakes in his own theories and opinions, in which I think granted the readers some space to think, and to better digest the contents of this book. Duncan J. Watts gathered opinions and research results from different areas to develop his theories. Network, as Duncan himself had mentioned, is an area of science with much more yet to be discovered. I got to say, this is some hard science that this book is discussing. It covers materials all the way from the study of social structures, advanced math, to advanced physics, and much more. Also according to Duncan, the science of network could actually be more closely to our lives then we imagined. Diseases, social structure, and economy are all under the fields of network. There¡¦s no way that a regular high school student like me could get a complete hold of such a complex structure of materials. Yet, Duncan¡¦s explanations and thoughtful examples successfully illustrated a number of clear pictures in my minds and really helped me a lot in the understanding of his concepts. I suggest everyone to read this book, even though one might not fully understand the book, it does give inspirations and provide new perspectives. I am glad that I read this book, it had an great impact upon my view of the world, and reminded how closely things could be related unexpectedly.
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