Linked

How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi | 4.12 | 4,559 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bill Barhydt, and 2 others. See all reviews

Ranked #5 in Graph Theory, Ranked #12 in Topology — see more rankings.

In the 1980's, James Gleick's Chaos introduced the world to complexity. Now, Albert-László Barabási's Linked reveals the next major scientific leap: the study of networks. We've long suspected that we live in a small world, where everything is connected to everything else. Indeed, networks are pervasive--from the human brain to the Internet to the economy to our group of friends. These linkages, it turns out, aren't random. All networks, to the great surprise of scientists, have an underlying order and follow simple laws. Understanding the structure and behavior of these networks will help us do some amazing things, from designing the optimal organization of a firm to stopping a disease outbreak before it spreads catastrophically.In Linked, Barabási, a physicist whose work has revolutionized the study of networks, traces the development of this rapidly unfolding science and introduces us to the scientists carrying out this pioneering work. These "new cartographers" are mapping networks in a wide range of scientific disciplines, proving that social networks, corporations, and cells are more similar than they are different, and providing important new insights into the interconnected world around us. This knowledge, says Barabási, can shed light on the robustness of the Internet, the spread of fads and viruses, even the future of democracy. Engaging and authoritative, Linked provides an exciting preview of the next century in science, guaranteed to be transformed by these amazing discoveries.From Linked:This book has a simple message: think networks. It is about how networks emerge, what they look like, and how they evolve. It aims to develop a web-based view of nature, society, and technology, providing a unified framework to better understand issues ranging from the vulnerability of the Internet to the spread of diseases. Networks are present everywhere. All we need is an eye for them...We will see the challenges doctors face when they attempt to cure a disease by focusing on a single molecule or gene, disregarding the complex interconnected nature of the living matter. We will see that hackers are not alone in attacking networks: we all play Goliath, firing shots at a fragile ecological network that, without further support, could soon replicate our worst nightmares by turning us into an isolated group of species...Linked is meant to be an eye-opening trip that challenges you to walk across disciplines by stepping out of the box of reductionism. It is an invitation to explore link by link the next scientific revolution: the new science of networks. less

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Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of Linked from the world's leading experts.

Anne-Marie Slaughter Linked is about how to understand the world in terms of networks. To understand network science the first thing to do is to visualise the world the way you visualise the Internet or even the universe – hubs of infinitely intersecting networks. As the author says, everything can be reduced to links and nodes. This book is a very accessible introduction to the science of networks and to how to think about everything from anthills to traffic jams to complex conflict from the perspective of network science. (Source)

Bill Barhydt Written before Facebook, this book predicts what the world will look like with amazing precision. (Source)

Rankings by Category

Linked is ranked in the following categories:

#22 in Chaos Theory
#56 in Geometry
#93 in Internet
#99 in Mathematical Physics
#98 in Networking

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