The One Thing That Went Right during Hurricane Sandy
Last week, as the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy gripped the country, most of the focus shifted to how catastrophic the damage was. In lieu of this damage, however, I feel that the government handled preparation relatively well. As a cohesive unit, the government took the necessary steps in preparing the citizens of the tri-state area […]
Political Information Cascades
With an increase in social media, candidates have been able to extend their reach to a greater number of people than ever before, informing them of their respective policies, beliefs, and overall electoral ideologies. With more information readily available, people are given more opportunities to educated themselves about the election. On the other hand, social […]
BGP and the routing structure of the Internet
Though we might not think about it. Any time we are connected to the internet we are relying on packet based routing protocols. There are two main philosophies for routing packets: proactive, where routers actively maintain rough mapping of where to send packets, and reactive, where a route is discovered on the fly when a […]
Facebook Subscription Fees
In 2011 there was a rumor spreading that Facebook was to start charging all users a subscription fee for use. Because Facebook users knew that did not have another network equivalent to Facebook to join for free, this subscription fee idea anger many. The reason there was no equivalent networking site to Facebook was not […]
The Future of Lying
In light of our substantial focus on information cascades and network effects, it is interesting to observe – on a less mathematical scale – the ramifications of a plethora of networks in one pervasive human trait: lying. It is no surprise that deception has existed in numerous species dating as far back as we can […]
Information cascades – present or not?
The idea of “crowd [un]intelligence” arising from information cascades has often been cited as a primary reason against the reality of Global Warming. Either as an elaborate conspiracy among a select minority of scientists, world leaders and policy makers, or simply a consequence of poor academic practices; skeptics often argue that the “evidence” for Global […]
The decline of physical music sales
In the past decade, the way people have been obtaining or listening to music has changed drastically. When one of your favorite artists released a new album, it was very common to go out and buy a physical copy of the CD and listen to it. Nowadays, that is rarely done. Everything has been shifting […]
« go back