Six Degrees How To
This exercise gives you a chance to investigate the quite remarkable phenomenon on "Brendan's Luck" we saw in Severin's insanely great quest to prove an Irish monk could have "discovered" America long before Columbus or even the Vikings. In the later readings (Gladwell, etc) we get a sense of how these networks work and how important they are. But the best way to understand something is to experience it yourself, and apply the theory. This quarter, I've downgraded this from a required paper to an excercise, so all you need to do is essentially the prewriting map part (this can be on paper, unless you want to get in touch with your inner geek and play with the software; if you get into it want to write a paper I'd of course be happy to read it).
Option 1:
The easiest way to get a sense of these networks is to "surf" the Knowledge Web, since that is one of its principle functions ( http://209.177.152.220:8080/kweb-search/ login=beta, password=slug). I'd like you to spend a minimum of a half hour total following whatever pathways appeal to you. What do you discover about how human relations affect what happens in the world? What kinds of people come together and how? Can you see any connections to or lessons for your own insanely great project? (not required, but if you get any ideas about how to make the K-Web work better, please send your notes on that).
You can get a better sense of the overall K-Web by running it in conjunction with a timeline (for example,
http://www.sbrowning.com/whowhatwhen/index.php , others at
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/History/Timelines/)
and maps
(http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/Maps/ ;
European: http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/ ; cool interactive but somewhat specialized ones at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~atlas/
Modern topography and some cities in coolest form from Google Earth, http://earth.google.com/ but you have to download the free software and have a pretty good graphics card). If your journey is interesting enough, you could just write your paper exploring the ideas you generate. Your paper could explore an interesting pathway through the K-Web, as Burke does in his books and television programs, or perhaps a hub. Note how your discoveries corroborate, contradict or extend the network theory articles in the course reader, including Severin.
Option 2:
The "On a Mission" option (what, still no mission? ideas or commiseration/procrastination at http://www.43things.com/) is to map your insanely great project idea: who has done something similar? Who has created the stuff (objects, processes, ideas) that your project builds upon? Who are the players/stakeholders in your project? (the ones who will use, help you create or resist your project?) Map how they are related to each other. Your paper will be what you've learned in creating and studying your map, and specifically how you can apply those lessons to your Insanely Great project. Note how your discoveries corroborate, contradict or extend the network theory articles in the course reader, including Severin.
Option 3:
is just map stuff you're interested in. I did this a while back and was surprised to find that "hubs" emerged that showed that things I didn't think were particularly important actually were. One was the Beat poets, and Zen Buddhism. For example, Alan Ginsberg and "Howl" and (and out-there rocker Frank Zappa) helped bring down the Soviet Union . The Beats also took out Richard Nixon: a guy who worked for the Pentagon was in Kyoto on a business trip and decided to check out amazing gardens there, which he'd read poems about). After, he wanders into a bar and has trouble ordering, so a couple Americans there, (a Beat poet and a guy who looked like a biker) help him out and they get to talking. Years later the guy is disgusted by the government lying about the Viet Nam War and smuggles out documents so the American people will know the truth, knowing that doing so will probably get him a life sentence. He drives across the country to Big Sur CA (just south of here) to see his poet friend again, partly to get the gumption up to go through with his plan i think. Nixon's efforts to discredit Ellsberg by having his dirty tricks team break into his psychiatrist's office to get dirt backfired, especially when the same guys got caught breaking into the Watergate. Your paper could explore an interesting pathway through your map, as Burke does in his books and television programs, or perhaps a hub. Note how your discoveries corroborate, contradict or extend the network theory articles in the course reader, including Severin.
Option 4:
Explore the biography you're reading/writing for social networks. In the early version, the goal was to figure out your person's creative process, see if it corroborates our course reading, and extract whatever lessons you can for your own creative life. In this paper, you'll focus on how your person interacted (or didn't?) with other people. Use the concepts from the course reader to explain what happened.
Option 5:
chart the class . Here's rough draft of one we did last year. This may require a team effort, so let me know if you want to do this one. The paper would basically report what you learned by building and studying patterns in the map. Ideally it would involve using concepts from the course reader.
The prewrite for this is a mindmap. You can do this low tech on paper or use:
Inspiration (free trial) allows multimedia and I think posting as web page http://www.inspiration.com/
Thebrain.com (personal version has free trial; coolest display, and it's east to annotate and include websites, but you can't print or post)
C-map is pretty easy to use, allows printing of results http://cmap.ihmc.us/ also allows remote collaboration http://cmap.ihmc.us/
Hardest to use, but probably the most powerful is http://www.altheim.com/ceryle/index.html
Go for at least three pages (750 word), since you want to demonstrate you understand how networks work, and less than that is five paragraph territory, and doesn't really give you enough content to develop the organization skills you'll need for the final research paper.
If you want to participate in a Six Degree experiment using email, see http://smallworld.columbia.edu/index.html