How we showed Homer’s Odyssey is not pure fiction, with a little help from Facebook
Source: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-homer-odyssey-pure-fiction-facebook.html
This article is an interesting look into how we can use modern social networking systems to determine the connectivity of humans, both past and future. The article looks into how realistic forms of fiction and their social networks are, bringing up the Marvel universe and Lord of the Rings as early examples. However, the paper mainly focuses on the reality of Homer’s “Odyssey”. Using translations from multiple languages to ensure that nothing slipped through the cracks, researchers found 342 characters with a total of 1,747 connections between them. Using complex networks theory (put simply, using features of social network graphing that don’t occur in more rudimentary graphs of networks, and attempt to model networks closer to real life), the researchers found that “Odyssey” exhibited social cliques and connections that very closely resemble that of human networks today, using Facebook for their basis of research.
(A complex network graph of the Odyssey’s 342 characters and the 1,747 connections and cliques between them, from the source cited)
This directly relates to the some of the earlier lessons that we have touched upon in lecture. It touches upon the “six degrees of separation” phenomenon, and how different groups of connections seem to share similarities. Using a historical example of a fictional story that almost certainly modeled its social network off the author’s own observations of networks in his environment, the article is an important look into the fundamental bases of human social networks that tend not to differ despite differences in time and culture. Similarly, the article uses Facebook analysis to arrive at many of its conclusions, and discusses what we talked about in class regarding the Facebook’s connections, and how little separation there truly is on the website. It is interesting to note how the Odyssey’s cliques form into groups similar to how people form today, as discussed in class. This only relates to humans in the story, however–when the mythological creatures and gods are included in the network, it becomes distinctly less naturally grouped in terms of connections and cliques. This provides strong proof that Homer’s work was based off of his own observations of people around him, which applied directly to his human characters and the networks they inhabited.