El 4: Linked

Al parecer no llego ni de vaina a los 20 libros en un año. Intentaré hacer un esfuerzo a ver si al menos me acerco.

Linked es un librito que vi recomendado en varios blogs y el tema de las redes es un tema que me llama la atención.

No se qué me pasa con los libros de divulgación científica que se me hacen desesperadamente cuesta arriba hasta la mitad y luego ya la cosa adquiere interés y los termino en una fracción del tiempo.

En fin, que Linked es un libro bastante interesante (sobre todo la segunda mitad :)) pero podría ser más corto. Muchas vueltas cuando el fondo del asunto podía haberse contado con más concreción.

Me copio el texto de la contraportada desde pjorge.com:

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.