Facebook: The Ultimate Network
http://observer.com/2014/09/my-facebook-friend-lived-a-good-life-and-then-died-too-soon/
Traditionally, Facebook has been used to connect with those that you have met. It follows a fairly regular routine; you mer the person in life, you send a friend request, and you get connected. But this author uses it in a different way. As with many celebrities, she has a presence on Facebook, but rather than having a page about her, she maintains her profile and adds friends, but not in the traditional sense. She adds people that she’s never met and in doing so, is able to meet all kinds of people from different parts of the world. Through this, she is able to extend her network and abel to connect with people from all over.
This is just one reason that it is highly improbably that the world can be composed of two components in its network graph. Today, the ability to network and connect with people from all over the world really emphasizes just how difficult it would be for there to be two components existing in this world. It means that there are two completely isolated groups that have no link between them, something that is increasingly difficult to do in today’s society. The ability to connect with people through a couple keystrokes at the computer is one of the reasons that society is so connected these days and is the reason why the idea that the world is composed of two or even more components is even less likely.
The author of this article also brings up a very interesting point: the fact that she is able to connect with people she has never met in real life; that she wouldn’t even recognize these people if she saw them in person. This illustrates the difference between friends and “Facebook friends” but also shows how the lines between the two are fading and how they are often synonymous these days. This has a profound impact on the network graphs of today if one wanted to graph the relationships between all the people, with a node being a person and an edge symbolizing the relationship between two people. The graphs today would have tone far more intricate and complex to capture the numerous connections between people as compared to even just 10 years ago. This shift in networking and the ability for people to meet people completely online has tremendous implications and impacts on the connectivity of society today.