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Friday, January 02, 2004 |
 Test.
8:57:33 PM 
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The Dean campaign is reliant on small-world dynamics for its power. The cross connections of egalitarian weak links of Deanie weblogs and the aristocratic Dean hub weblog serve to amplify good or positive information moving through the system. Of course, this can cut the other way too. Bad or negative information can be amplified out of proportion in this type of network.
My guess is that the Dean network is composed of relatively isolated clusters of nodes that rely on high throughput conduit nodes for connectivity. If this is true, then the Dean hub and software strategy is correct. It is using the hub weblog to pump information to the high-throughput conduit weblogs using RSS (which strengthens them).
Of course, the Dean campaign isn't the only organization using the power of Internet enabled small-world networks. Groups across the world are doing the same, including terrorists. Terrorists? Yes. The rise of both the Internet and the first global terrorist organization (that could challenge the world's only remaining superpower) is closely linked.
4:24:39 PM
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Jim Moore picks up on the small-world phenomena in blogland. Right on! This is precisely the glue that is linking up groups globally (think second superpower). Weblogs aren't only alternative media sources, they link groups together in ways that promote coordinated action. There's lots of great work going on right now analyzing online social networks in relation to small-world dynamics.
1:10:12 PM
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Seattle PI. Valdez begins shipping oil again.  Tankers load Prudhoe Bay oil destined for the Lower 48 at Valdez, the end of the trans-Alaska pipeline, which carries 17 percent of the nation's domestic oil supply. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Alaska disaster officials identified the pipeline as the only real terrorist target that could have national implications. There are 18 storage tanks in Valdez with a capacity to hold 9.1 million barrels of oil.
800 miles of vulnerability.
9:51:31 AM
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The Independent. Brit participatory democracy trial results in a "ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation." "The people have spoken ... the bastards."
9:25:51 AM
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CNN. US to inspect N. Korean nuke site. Wow. Amazing how the human race tends to muddle through. Perhaps it is an invisible hand (like Adam Smith's) of collective humanity that leads us back from the precipice of anhilation.
8:10:46 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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