Thacker & Galloway

This week’s reading, The Exploit by Galloway and Thacker, was definitely an interesting juxtaposition to last week’s 6 Degrees by Watts. Watts talked about networks using scientific method and computation, showing the ability of networks to spread and multiply. Between the two writings, there’s a common theme that networks are powerful. Whether its a file sharing system, a community of people, a virus (the computer kind or the biological kind), we interact with networks everyday.

My fellow movie buffs and I enjoy playing a little 6 Degrees of [insert actor of choice] to see who knows more movie trivia. We used to only play using Kevin Bacon but we found that we knew more movies by Tom Hanks than Kevin Bacon (incidentally both were in Apollo 13, so you can always connect the Baconator by that route if you choose). I’m sure I’m not the only one who has met a person and immediately started talking and name dropping to see what kind of mutual acquaintances we can discover between us. In talking with my dad this weekend, he vented about the frustrations of Microsoft and PCs because his home computer just up and died a couple weeks ago. Once again I tried to give him the ‘mac talk,’ alas, to no avail. Beginning last week, I became very familiar with a biological kind of network. Call it ‘the bug’ or ‘flu’ or ‘that annual winter cold-like thing,’ it started with a co-worker and has now spread pretty much through my whole store. Yayy networks!

Now The Exploit goes further. To me it seemed like, for G&T, there’s a danger to the power of networks because the information is widely available now online. Basically everything has become searchable. Your entire life’s work can be tagged, organized into a streamlined hierarchy, and small enough to fit on flash drive the size of a bluetooth ear piece. The title is a good indication to the book. ‘Exploiting‘ is to take advantage of something. G&T explain that networks are increasingly easier to exploit the bigger they get. Part of me loves that Macs are becoming more popular, but then at the same time I don’t want to be targeted by viruses like the PCs are.

‘Nodes’ and ‘edges’ was a recurring set of terms. Nodes being the businesses of networks, like Google. The Edges are the potential of the network to distribute information to people, and for them to use these businesses for their own benefits. I don’t know what to make of this completely. Thanks to the power of the flu-network, my head is still in a fog so this was an extra tough read. I guess it’s again about the potential of networks, and the tendency of networks to kind of monopolize, which then makes them more susceptible.

The main thing I picked up in these network readings is that there is a tremendous amount of potential ability of networks to spread knowledge, to spread a cause, but at the same time, using the same tools, a network can be very malicious. Thinking of that as a concept or theme for this whole class, I think you could compare the good/bad potential of networks to the good/bad potential of ‘old media.’ Newspapers can distribute useful information, or they can print slander (or libel?). The same goes for television, movies that pretend to be ‘based on a true story,’ and yes, blogs like this. Basically, you should look at everything with an open mind that is explorative, and not just a sponge for every bit of info you come across; if you are a conscious consumer, then you have a good start to navigating the maze that is the media, and the world.