Mad cow disease highlights an interesting dimension of networks (or processes, which can be viewed through the lens of network science). This was prompted after reading an interview with John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, authors of Mad Cow, USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?, from 1998(!).



Economies, or sectors of the economies, can be seen as networks of buyers and sellers. The production process is a circuit of connections between suppliers, producers and consumers. Food chains are ecological networks. In the agricultural sector, these bundles of connections all overlap.



Per the interview above, mad cow disease (MCD) became a problem when the life of the cow became a closed circuit -- farmers, to boost protein in the diet of cows (because the bovine growth hormone being injected into the cows worked best w/ a high protein diet -- chains of causality) fed chopped up, rendered cow parts to the herd, turning them into unwitting cannibals. Dead cows were fed to living cows, so the relatively rare spongy brain problem was fed back into the system, increasing the likelihood of the problem intensifying. Per Sheldon Rampton: "And that could create a closed amplification loop". AKA a positive feedback loop, like you get when you hold a microphone too close to the speaker it is connected to.



The nature of interactions in a network then can be of a positive feedback nature (not always a bad thing) or of a negative feedback nature (like the thermostat in the home -- if the temperature gets to hot, it triggers an event that causes the temperature to drop). Leaps are associated with positive feedback loops; normal development with negative feedback loops.



MCD is a confluence of technological revolution (the genetically-engineered growth hormone) and capitalism (maximization of profit demands new technology whether safe or not for humans and other living things, and requires the re-organization of production around the new technology to squeeze of the maximum profit).



Another interesting dimension of MCD is the disease itself -- MCD is caused not by a bacteria or virus, but rather by a mutant protein. It's not a living thing as such, and standard sterilization practices (including heat, irradiation and or most chemicals) cannot eradicate it, which enables the disease to survive the rigors of the rendering process by which dead cows are turned into food for live cows. Called "prions" (see "Prion Diseases" for more info), these mutant proteins somehow interact with normal proteins causing the normal ones to turn into prions. (Another kind of interaction, in this case in the network of protein interactions within the brain). The result is the disintegration of the brain; holes developing in the middle of it, hence "spongiform".

theyrule.net is a practical and useful application of network science to connections within the ruling class.

On the nature of connections, and the process of one network being replaced by another:



"The world's major financial institutions have all joined this race to develop black-box financial systems. The bulge of credit that moves around the globe with the sun and the time value of money, whose bits and bytes are flowing with ever-increasing velocity, dictate that success goes to the swift. Moving with equal rapidity are the risks that can wipe out unsuspecting players. 'No one really knows how to eliminate all the risks,' says Andrew Lo, who directs the financial-engineering programs at MIT. 'But we do know that less sophisticated technology will lose out over time to more sophisticated technology. That is why the old-boy network is being replaced by the computer network. Call it revenge of the nerds, but everyone on Wall Street is scrambling to develop computer-driven programs.' This is why physics and finance are converging into the new science of phynance."



Thomas Bass (1999) The Predictors.

(Originally posted on another list, a few months back - jd)



In order to "defeat Bush", somebody else needs to get elected. That's the

bigger question. Duh.


What can networks/network science tell us about elections? Campaigns are

(ad hoc) networks, with clusters in various "constituencies" like

fundamentalists, trade unionists, Chicago machine, etc.? Those

clusters/constituencies have hubs/super-connectors, which suggests a

strategy for working w/ them? All of this obvious to anyone who's done

campaign work.


What's more interesting to me is how the clusters are going through a

process of disintegration and reconstruction, driven by the economic

revolution and the ensuing social consequences. The links w/in the clusters

are being destroyed as workers are laid off, city and state budgets

slashed, social anxiety rising, etc etc.


The reconstruction part is more interesting -- e.g., new links/shapes w/in

the trade union movement; peace movement; environment movement. And what

role ideas and vision have to play there; what might come out of the 2004

election process?

Here's a link for the Emergent Phenomena Research Group at Bryn Mawr U.



Looks to be a good reading list and links to other resources.



jd

Quotes from Engels, Dialectics of Nature (page numbers refer to MECW edtion, vol. 25)

Motion, interconnection



"The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existences extending from stars to atoms.... In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is ready included that they react on one another, and it is precisely evident here that matter is unthinkable without motion. It already becomes evident herr that matter is unthinkable without motion." p. 363



"All motion consists of the interplay of attraction and repulsion."



"Dialectics has proved from the results of our experience of nature so far that all polar opposites in general are determined by the mutual action of the two opposite poles on each other, that the separation and opposition of these poles exist only within their mutual connection and union, and conversely, that their union exists only in their separation and their mutual connection only in their opposition." 364-365.

Emergence (local interactions lead to global behaviors) is related to network science (underline the word interactions).



Here's a selection from item that someone passed along to me from eWeek:

"The tech story of the year so far that will be even bigger next year?...



"My vote is the edict by Wal-Mart requiring its top suppliers to put RFID tags on pallets and cases of their products by January 2005. The tagging requirement by Wal-Mart is only the latest in a string of announcements and innovations that is moving the important, but lackluster to some, topic of inventory control and management toward the top of the technology agenda. ...



"'The Wal-Mart announcement is the first time I can remember a business decision of this magnitude being made in anticipation of technology innovation and commercialization. The unanticipated consequences—for vendors, consumers, competitors and regulators—will be fascinating to watch: We don't yet have tools, laws, productive capacity, standards or social norms to accommodate this technology and its potential implications,' said John Jordan, principal in the Office of the CTO, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, in an e-mail exchange in which he assessed the importance of the Wal-Mart announcement.



"'The ripple effect this technology can have is amazing. Think of the leveraging power that the Internet, e-mail and IP communications provided in connecting people to people and computers. RFID is the next link of connecting "things"—and not just information about these things but also their processes, places and contact points. All of this information has been hidden in the supply chain,' said Fran Rabuck, president of Rabuck Associates and a member of the eWEEK Corporate Partner Advisory Board.



"The ripple of connecting all these things is just beginning. While much of the current debate has focused on the cost of the tags, that's not where the technical hurdles remain. The difficulty of developing the database system for tracking everything in the warehouse, the problems of building a privacy infrastructure that will match a company's privacy policy, and the requirements of building and maintaining a flexible and scalable computer architecture for identifying, tracking and managing all those millions of products moving through the economic system will ensure the RFID story remains a top pick for a long time. "



-- From Eric Lundquist, "Wal-Mart gets it right", eWeek. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1191646,00.asp

Howard Rheingold talks about similar concepts in his 2003 book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution:

"When you piece together these different technological, economic, and social components, the result is an infrastruture that makes certain kinds of human actions possible that were never possible before. The 'killer apps' of tomorrow's mobile infocom industry won't be hardware devices or software programs but social practices. The most far-reaching changes will come, as they often do, from the kinds of relationships, enterprises, communities, and markets that the infrastructure makes possible."