We are all acutely aware of the dark side of life–of death and decay, of insecurity and depression, of tottering economies and hard times, of addiction and indifference, and of the cruelty that humans, almost uniquely as a species, visit upon one another. For the moment, we have triumphed over nature and material need, but suffering continues shamefully and nature may still take its revenge.
Yet there is also a truly bright side to human evolution. We have created networks that allow society to develop increased wealth and welfare, variety and cohesion, freedom and responsibility for one another’s wellbeing, individuality and sociability. That is no mean feat. It has been achieved because, as time has passed, humans have been able to pay increasing attention to personal and social considerations, less to the need for survival and the requirements of bare subsistence, and more to the deployment of individual talents and cooperation, in a tight but light web of mutual dependence.
Viewing life through the simple prism of hubs, strong links and weak links, our vital personal and business decisions become clearer, less fraught, less frenetic, less bounded. Every few years we choose a new career hub or add a social context that has the potential to propel us to a new world. Every day we notice unexpected links with interesting people, links that can enrich our lives in small or big ways. Unlike Charlie Chaplin the hapless screen victim, we choose increasingly congenial yet challenging hubs, as Chaplin himself did in real life. Unlike the adolescent James Dean, we are not alienated from mainstream society. Yet we become individuals to the highest possible degree.
We are full, active and engaged members of a truly connected society; of that mysterious but no longer elusive entity–the human race. Our individuality and distinctiveness make deep communication possible, binding us all together in history’s greatest paradox–the ever closer, tighter, freer and richer fabric of humanity.
Acknowledgements
Superconnect took ages to write, and although we enjoyed the process, releasing the book is a cause for great joy.
And also much gratitude.
First, we’d like to thank all the scholars who have toiled in the field of network science and its antecedents. We’ve been inspired most by Mark Granovetter, our favourite sociologist, the late Stanley Milgram, Albert-László Barabási, Réka Albert, Steven Strogatz and Duncan J. Watts. We are also grateful to many philosophers and authors who have made us think and have contributed to ideas found here–the great John Stuart Mill, Vilfredo Pareto, Frigyes Karinthy, Bruce Henderson and the much-missed Jane Jacobs; William Gibson, Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Goleman, Marshall McLuhan and Steven Pinker; and three economists–Thomas Schelling, Paul Krugman and Tim Harford–all of whom are very much alive.
Plaudits are also due to the sixty or so people, from all walks of life and many different countries, whom we interviewed for this book. Many of them are identified by name in the text, so there is no need for a long list here; but we are profoundly grateful for their insights and time, not just in being interviewed, but in checking the transcripts of their interviews and providing additional thoughts. We are also thankful for the many other distinguished people who were interviewed and preferred to remain anonymous, but similarly took great trouble with their stories and comments. Further thanks to everyone who connected us with their own contacts, nominating interesting interviewees–Jim Lawrence, Rick Haller, André Plisnier, Sally Holloway and John Hewitt were particularly helpful here.
Thank you to the many friends who read drafts of the manuscript–oh, so many drafts!–and provided valuable and critical feedback, even if it was not fully appreciated at the time. Some people even managed to provide inspiration and feedback over lunch, without ever seeing the drafts! Those who spring to mind as we write this are Andrin Bachmann, Eric Benedict, Neil Chalmers, Helen Clark, Chris Eyles, Robin Field, Matthew Grimsdale, Stuart Heather, John Hewitt, Charles Hutchinson, Jim Lawrence, Iain MacMillan, Martin Nye, Jamie Reeve, Anthony Rice and Mary Saxe-Falstein.
In a category all her own is our agent, Sally Holloway, whose work cannot be praised too highly, and without whom this book would not exist. Our agent in America, Zoe Pagnamenta, has also been a great light in our lives, and her enthusiasm for the book has been very encouraging.
Our publishers, Angela Vonderlippe at W. W. Norton, and Tim Whiting at Little, Brown, have been tremendously helpful and a pleasure to work with. And their respective colleagues, Erica Stern and Iain Hunt, have been splendid, too.
Richard would like to pay tribute to his extremely pleasant and efficient new assistant, Francisco Martins, as well as his neighbours in Portugal–Susan, Paul, Uli and Horst; the people and dogs of Butoque for their daily inspiration; and Bernhard and Irene Strathmann, who not only designed and commissioned the wonderful house where much of this book was written, but sold it to Richard–they have played a large part in making the last year highly enjoyable and productive. Richard’s greatest thanks, however, go to Matthew and Tocker, who have done more than they know to make this book possible.
Greg would like to thank his colleagues, particularly Andrin and Helen, for their generous encouragement in his book-writing. Finally, he is most grateful to Christina, who, against all his instincts, got him to buy a house on a hill in the middle of nowhere. It has turned out to be a place in the middle of somewhere very special indeed, and a perfect place to write. And to his six-year-old daughter Zoe, who has taught him more than anyone else about human nature.
Endnotes
CHAPTER ONE
1
Jean-Philippe Bouchard and Marc Mézard (2000) ‘Wealth Condensation in a Simple Model of the Economy’,
Physica A
282, page 536. See also Richard Koch (1997)
The 80/20 Principle
, Nicholas Brealey, London.
CHAPTER TWO
2
Jane Jacobs (1961)
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
, Random House, New York.
3
Stanley Milgram (1967), ‘The Small-World Problem’,
Psychology Today
1, pages 61–7.
4
Jeffrey Travers and Stanley Milgram (1969) ‘An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem’,
Sociometry
32 (4) (December), pages 425–3; quotation page 426.
5
Judith S. Kleinfeld (2002) ‘The Small-World Problem’,
Society
39 (2), pages 61–6.
6
Peter Sheridan Dodds, Roby Muhamad and Duncan J. Watts (2003) ‘An Experimental Study of Search in Global Social Networks’,
Science
301 (8 August), pages 827–9.
7
After Watts adjusted mathematically for incomplete chains. We think Judith Kleinfeld exaggerates both how scanty Milgram’s data were and how difficult it was to see his workings. In 1969 Jeffrey Travers and Stanley Milgram published their results quite clearly in the academic journal
Sociometry
(see note 3 above). Table 2 breaks down the three different samples, described as ‘Nebraska Random’, ‘Nebraska Stockholders’ and ‘Boston Random’, showing for each the number of completed chains, and the range and average chain length for each sample. In the Nebraska Random sample, there were 18 completed chains and the mean chain length was 5.7; in the Nebraska Stockholders, 24 completed chains and a mean length of 5.4. The difference between the two samples’ number of intermediaries–perhaps surprisingly, given that one would expect the investors to be considerably more successful–was not statistically significant. The investor group was chosen not to rig the results but specifically to test whether it would have more success compared with a random group–and it didn’t. Therefore, we can aggregate these samples, producing forty-two completed chains. Although the Boston Random group had a shorter average chain length than the Nebraska Random group (4.4 and 5.7 intermediaries, respectively), it is surprising that the difference wasn’t greater, considering that the folders travelling from Nebraska had to cross 1300 miles while those from the Boston area had to go fewer than 25 miles.