We live in a network, that’s a fact.
Each of us relates, influences and is influenced, teaches and learns, knows and presents, acts and interacts in a network. What we do and how we do it depends heavily on our network; I would go so far as to say that who we are also depends in part on the network we are part of.
In short – it’s worth thinking about!
We have four Alphalink articles on this subject:
- The importance of networks (this article)
- The strength of weak ties
- The power of weak ties in our lives
- Networks?! What do I do with it?
So, let’s start at the beginning: what is this network thing anyway?
Nothing very complex – a network is a set of nodes joined together by links. In the context I’m referring to:
- We, the people, are the nodes in the network.
- The links are the relationships that bind us together.
The unsuspecting observer might think that the network is something new, something popularised by the facebooks and the linkedins of this world, but it’s not – ever since human beings have been human, we’ve lived in networks; the network is the web of societies, groups and families.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the 6 degrees of distance (there are also those who say 5 or 8, but it’s not a precise number): every human being is less than 6 degrees away from everyone else.
I know Joe, who knows Mary, who knows Lihuan, who knows the Emperor of Japan – this means that I am 4 degrees away from the Emperor of Japan. There’s nobody in the world who’s more than 6 degrees of distance away from me – that’s the power of the network.
In this article I present an article by Mark Granovetter with some surprising conclusions about network phenomena.
In the third article of this series, I present some practical conclusions that can be drawn from all this.
Jaime Quintas
Illustration by Ana Salvado | All rights reserved.
