Six Degrees: the science of a connected age (2004 in paperback, ISBN 0-393-32542-3 and 2003 in hardcover, ISBN 0-393-04142-5) is a popular science book by Duncan J. Watts covering the application of network theory to sociology.
The book covers Watts' own work on the small-world networks, and continues on to cover scale-free networks, network searching, epidemics and network failures, social decision making, thresholds in networks, and innovation in large organizations.
In addition to covering the theoretical models and empirical case studies, the book also includes several stories about the character of the researchers who developed this science and their relationships with each other.
The case studies used include blackouts in the North American electricity distribution network, the relationships among members of corporate boards of directors, the distribution of wealth in societies, peer-to-peer file distribution systems, Internet viruses, economic bubbles, and the Toyota-Aisin crisis.
Famous quotes containing the words science, connected and/or age:
“The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I like to see a home like this, a home connected with people’s thoughts and work, things they love.”
—Dewitt Bodeen (1908–1988)
“An age is the reversal of an age:
When strangers murdered Emmet, Fitzgerald, Tone,
We lived like men that watch a painted stage.
What matter for the scene, the scene once gone:
It had not touched our lives.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)