"... statistical evidence and practical experience suggests densely networked societies create more and egalitarian opportunities for self-organizing solutions to social problems."

I'd guess this chapter will evolve into its own book as the author has packed a lot of big ideas in here. My initial impression would be to break the flow down with better subheadings and idiot-proof the geekspeak.

Overall the site and direction of the upcoming edition is beginning to have the feel of a precursor to a new Federalist Papers for a sociopolitical network revolution if you consider how cheap printing presses influenced early America.

Cool.

Mitch / Joe ...

The TypeKey login doesn't seem to be working ..... "The site you're trying to comment on has not signed up for this feature. Please inform the site owner."

Also ... paragraph breaks don't seem to be displayed either (at least in the preview).

Scott

Scott,

We missed a step in turning on TypeKey authentication. It should work now. As for paragraph breaks, I don't completely understand... none of the entries is longer than one paragraph.

Just testing the TypeKey login.

Seems to work.

( the yes/no 'remember me' buttons are not remembering previous selections )

Overall the site and direction of the upcoming edition is beginning to have the feel of a precursor to a new Federalist Papers for a sociopolitical network revolution if you consider how cheap printing presses influenced early America.

You took the words right out of my mouth. The rest of the book is nice, rah-rah stuff to me, but this chapter plus 4, 9, 10 start to sketch in the blueprint for "how to get there from here".

Somewhere along the way we have to see that earnestness & having truth on our side isn't enough & that mastering the math of networks will be a vital step in this restructuring & revitalization of democracy. These chapters go a long way towards demonstrating that. I'm very excited to see what comes next.

Tim

Err, make that Chapter 3 not 4, Clay's classic Weblogs, Power Laws & Inequality essay. My bad.

Tim

You're welcome to delete the TypeKey posts though it doesn't matter.

Consider putting the "potential chapter" in a Wiki format for community editing.

"Somewhere along the way we have to see that earnestness & having truth on our side isn't enough & that mastering the math of networks will be a vital step in this restructuring & revitalization of democracy."

These words left me awe. Let me be the second person in this thread to say: "you took the words right out of my mouth."

I think that a networked approach to democracy does have serious potential but, as the article on the Swift vote veterans illustrated, this form is also susceptible to traditional democracy's nemesis: propaganda.

As a personal side note, I am currently recuperating from a Math/CS undergrad degree and I am on the hunt for a grad program that focuses on rigorous social network research. Thus far I have found programs at Carnegie Mellon and UC Irvine. Anyone else know of other similar programs?

On the left bar the link to chapter 11 does not lead to the html page but directly to the pdf page.

Pietro