I am intrigued by the mapping demonstrated in today's readings. I've noticed the "small world" phenomenon at my gym; there are two or three people whose name everyone knows. There's a lot of casual, low-level social interaction, but these few people seem to have a much greater number of "links." What's more fascinating to me is that, at least according to the movie, this apparently naturally occurring phenomenon can easily be exploited. It's sort of like how aliens on t.v. shows are attracted to humans' body heat -- they're attracted to the very thing that makes us human, something we can't change about ourselves.

To the extent that I can understand the Physics of the Web, the Internet, a physical structure, has the same small world properties as the Web, a virtual structure. These patterns make me wonder how information travels, and how do we find out what we want to know. The clubs in the Daily Show video seemed to be entirely without interconnectivity, though of course that interconnectivity is really just not mapped. I assume that links between Jewish Queers and Allies and Ballroom Dancing follow the same patterns that are described in the other articles.

It's interesting to hear you all talk about social networking sites being lame. They always struck me as something that would be really cool if you were an early teen, but I never understood the attraction for older people unless they were promoting themselves for some reason. But I've know college students who were completely addicted to these sites and found exploring them endlessly fascinating. Maybe it's similar to the way I used to play backgammon with my roommate in college for hours as a way to avoid studying and to relax. It didn't take any higher-order-thinking-skills, but it nonetheless kept my mind occupied.

A theme that recurs for me through all of these essays and posts is that links are citations as well as connections. Citations in print journals have always been for me highly restricted. Yes, if I'm reading an article as part of research for my own writing then I'll definitely read the works cited page and/or bibliography. Years of bitter experience, though, have taught me to be highly selective when I decide which citations to track. Not infrequently, the citations are incorrect and do not lead me to any source at all. Or, even more common, I find the desired citation, but it's really not relevant to my study. Sometimes, by the time I find or receive the source, I've moved on in my thinking about the subject and I'm no longer interested in that source. All of these things would be reproduced in online citation searchs, but the process of tracking full-text citations is much more dynamic. I'd be able to do much of it in a few hours rather than several weeks, and I wouldn't have to pay a dime per page to copy an article.