Information Flow and Strength of Ties in Technology
https://www.wsj.com/articles/welcome-to-the-network-generation-11653053050
This article covers the powerful aspects technology has on creating meaningful and strong (or weak) connections with people. The article states “It exposes them to ‘new types of people’ and helps them ‘find different points of view’” when speaking on how technology changes the way information is accessed. I find this interesting because in a tight knit group, the members on either end of the “local bridge” typically mediate the flow of information from group to group, but with applications such as Reddit, perhaps new and different clusters can be formed where mass amounts of information can be accessed by almost anyone.
The article also dives into how the pandemic dampened the flow of information between people since they were seeing each other less, but because of technology perhaps the strength of these connections can be measured by minutes spent on the phone with each other (as stated by Professor Kleinberg). However, such ways of measuring are not perfect, as sometimes strong ties can exist between people who spend little to no time on the phone with each other, so the data is not perfect.