Review of Chapters 1-9 from Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's "Linked"

Albert-LászlóBarabási is a well-known physicist who conducts research in several areas of study and is also a professor at Northeastern University. He has won numerous awards over the course of his career and it is of no surprise that he is also author of multiple books on the subject of the interconnectedness of the world. The study of networks is Barabási’s specialty and this is abundantly clear in the first nine chapters of his book "Linked" in which he explores the complexity of how everyone and everything is connected to one another. The book is by no stretch at a loss for details on the background of the concept of the network, mathematical principals, and real life examples of modern applications of the discussed theories. It is these attributes of the book that make it simultaneously a well-organized informative read as well as an inundation of history on a subject that many live and experience everyday but seldom give a second thought to.

In the initial chapter labeled as the introduction the reader is immediately thrown into stories about the beginnings of Christianity and hacking. A story about early Christians in a book about networks grabs the reader’s attention but is also a bit of a distraction because the reader is reading through the story wondering why it is there and what the author is trying to accomplish with its inclusion. Towards the end of the chapter he brings it all together and we see that he has cleverly tied the spreading of Christianity to marketing. In the end this was a unique approach but the introduction could have used a little more of an introduction to further drive the point of this chapter, to set the foundation for networks and allow the reader to open their mind and remove any preconceptions of what will be discussed in a book about links and networks.

The second chapter, “The Random Universe”, is heavy on the mathematical theories and feels like information overload but it redeems itself with the introduction of the party full of strangers. This was a great way to present the subject matter in a way that is easy to understand for the non-physicist reader. The third chapter, “Six Degrees of Separation”, is possibly the most fun chapter of them all. This chapter attempts to find the beginnings of this theory and doesn’t just apply the theory to people. Also effective in many of the chapters is the sprinkled mentions of concepts that will be further explored in the subsequent chapters. This is effective because it keeps the reader mindful of how each chapter in itself is “linked” to the other.

In each chapter of the book we are introduced to a new player (or node) in the evolution of “networks”. Keeping with the central theme of the book, “Small Worlds”, the 4^th chapter we are taken through the history of “networks” and each of the figures that we were introduced to in earlier chapters are interwoven into the remaining chapters further driving home that everyone and everything is linked. Chapters 5-9 continue to interweave the past characters in the journey of uncovering the interworking of networks but delve deeper into the details involved within. We are introduced to concepts of hubs and connectors and how certain nodes can actually be hubs with a large number of links coming from them.

Overall the first few chapters of this book start off rocky but smooth themselves out towards the middle. In reading this book, there is no doubt that Barabási is the authority on this subject and has thoroughly researched it. The book so far is smartly written and is a wealth of information on how we are all connected.