[ba-unrev-talk] Macroscope! An essential OHS module?
http://radio.weblogs.com/0104369/stories/2002/04/09/macroscope022702.htm
(patent pending, all rights reserved) (01)
This is about social network theory. (02)
"Genes spread through gene pools as biological agents spread through
populations, as messages propagate over the internet, as ideas spread
through communities, as tunes spread through popular consciousness, as
ideologies spread through societies. Patterns of propagation, ramification,
and repetition are the warp and woof of life, mind, and culture. These
patterns are usually invisible. A "macroscope" could make them visible. [i]
The profound importance of branching and interconnecting proliferative
patterns has been established and celebrated by Malthus, Darwin, Mendel,
Watson/Crick, William James, Richard Dawkins, Tim Berners-Lee, and many
others[ii], but the problem remains under-appreciated and under-studied.
The intra- and inter-disciplinary importance of this topic is increasingly
clear to evolutionary theorists and graph theorists, to applied scientists
such as epidemiologists and social network analysts, to educators, and even
to those who must worry that distributed terrorist networks conspire over
global networks of communication to release genetically-engineered
bio-weapons into unprotected populations. " (03)