Starter Blog: Social Networks 101

posted by Eleanor Wynn on October 12, 2006

I have been looking at complexity science for several years as a solution source for organizational problems. One of the problems that is easily accessible to me as a social—rather than physical—scientist or mathematician/engineer, etc. is social networks. What I like about complexity science is that similar laws apply across a broad range of domains, making it not wrong that I received a PhD in linguistic anthropology rather than math, which in retrospect would have been a good idea. Basic new ideas about the power (laws) of social networks apply across many application areas. I will start with the most recent experience I had of how these ideas can catch on and accelerate current practices for generating innovation.

I just got back from Mexico City (otherwise known as D.F.) I was invited as a plenary speaker to a large conference of K-12 educators put on by SOMECE (Sociedad Mexicana de Computacion en Educacion). I think there were maybe 600 or more educators present, along with officials from different government groups responsible for disseminating new educational practices across Mexico. This dissemination includes rural areas, utilizes Internet technology, has inspiration from MIT Media Lab, and is supported regionally by Intel’s Craig Barrett and locally by Intel Mexico Education Manager Luis Lach.

One obvious first advantage of Internet-based education support is the equalization of skills in primary education teachers, because some of the curriculum materials are provided on CD or via video connections. That means the teacher can concentrate on nurturing students while new curricula are developed elsewhere. As well, I learned from a teacher I sat next to that there is an intensive program of teacher development that includes lots of technology instruction. One of the booths at the conference had what you might call user manuals for children as early as grade 2. That’s right, kiddie user manuals. I would have bought one if I knew I would be blogging about it.

On to the theme. The whole Internet education scheme in Latin America is the product of the power of social networks that the region specializes in so well and so naturally. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico, all have some form of government sponsored K-12 Internet education programs. Part of my presentation included the diffusion of technological education from the well-known Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey to the University of Bucaramanga in Colombia, and from that point out to six different Colombian Universities. This includes the hardware, reception and transmission capabilities and the educational materials, content and software. There is an exponential curve to the diffusion rate. In this case, the ITEM started out as the sponsoring partner providing all the nurturing and materials and Bucaramanga was the “receptive” end. But in a short time, Bucaramanga was the local provider of educational services within Colombia. This case study comes courtesy of my Intel intern, Guillermo Rueda, who is from Colombia and is a PhD candidate at Portland State University Department of System Sciences.

The larger scale theme I presented is the role of the social network as the provider of innovation. Geniuses may exist at the far edges of the network, but without the context of network connections for diffusion, and especially social network hubs for broader diffusion, their ideas may not go far. One of the examples I used was from the Social Sciences Research Council, provided by Diana Rhoten. It showed that if you take the interdisciplinary people out of the network, which heretofore was end-to-end (i.e. everyone a few steps away from everyone else), you get a fragmented thing that you can’t really call a network, but rather islands of information. Experts and hubs are both important as Malcolm Gladwell and Duncan Watts have described in their respective books, Tipping Point and Six Degrees.

Internal to Intel, a very inventive colleague who works in validation has created maps that show that if five hubs are removed from a social network in his work area, about 70% of innovation (and its diffusion) falls away. Academic studies, (references to follow, but my main source here is David Obstfeld) have shown the same thing: that without “bridges” across dense islands of highly connected individuals, you don’t get innovation. This was a key point of Watts’ book Six Degrees, and of Mark Granovetter’s work on Getting a Job. In a small dense network, knowledge is uniform. Until you get the chance to compare contexts across dense small networks, you can’t rise above the local problem and therefore you have limited solutions.

In my Mexico City talk I used some maps of prehistoric trade routes all over the world. These are networks, too, and also paths for innovation and cultural transfer of goods both material and cognitive or cultural, including language. During the Neolithic era in the Americas, trade existed from Yucatan Peninsula as far as contemporary Alaska, Florida and Northeastern US. But these networks took very long times and many relays to traverse. Today’s networks can provide value in minutes, hours and days.

The audience at the talk was particularly responsive to the idea that social networks and long distance cultural exchange are not just a fact of today’s society, but of perennial human patterns. The fact that Internet access makes the exchange both immediate and low-cost is a function of the world we live in now, one that is highly distributed but with similar expectations of learning, life-style and democratic aspiration. For the purpose of education and for the purpose of maintaining robust traditional social networks, it is an important point that networking by means of the Internet is not necessarily a departure but an adaptation.

One last point. How did I find myself in Mexico City in front of an audience of educators? Well, in 1998, when I had my own consulting company I was browsing the Internet for the topic of computerization in Latin America (where I grew up with my North American parents). I found a conference sponsored by UNESCO to be held in Aguascalientes, Mexico two weeks hence. I immediately signed up. Standing in the broad plaza of the Mexican INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica Geografia e Informatica) organization, with a 12-piece mariachi band and flowing tequila, I happened to meet a key person in K-12 networks in Costa Rica. Speaking of networks, this one new contact led to many others in a short span of days; and the group of us had dinner the last evening of the conference. We pledged to stay in touch. One of the members set up an Internet group for us. So, over the ensuing 8 years, we have exchanged information both personal and professional, intermittently. This is where Granovetter’s “loose ties” construct comes into play. I helped one member get into a prestigious graduate program in England. We heard news of births, grandchildren, field work opportunities for my Intel colleagues, and relevant conferences for all.

It was from a member of this group that I received the invitation. Yes, people you know become influential over time! A short-term face to face contact became a long term but low investment Internet network, which in turn became an intense face-to-face encounter for four of us. (I learned about the two-tequila lunch, something we don’t do in Intel US or probably worldwide. More folkore to come on this topic.) In complexity science this would be called both aggregation (the grouping) and emergence (unexpected nonlinear outcomes). I hope it will lead to further professional and personal exchanges. My trip was sponsored by Intel Mexico Education Group (who had never heard of me before), so an internal bond was also created. Extended ties can also reinforce within-group ties. Enough said: Networks Work!

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tagged: developing world, emergence, Internet education, Mexico, social networks