Arquivo para a ‘Social Network’ Categoria
We are so connected this way
24
May
The so-called “small world” phenomenon, worked on and addressed in Social Network Analysis (not to be
confused with social media) is the idea that everyone can be connected through only six degrees of separation, and this has inspired not only scientists , but also artists, journalists, business people and the general public since the idea emerged in a 1990 John Guare play.
Despite recent appearances of this concept in the media, illustrating the widespread belief in universal connectivity, there is also controversy over the same claim, and Barabási’s non-scale model is one of them, though his book Linked: the New Science of networks (2009) is the best reading of the topic.
Two examples cited are “Xing,” a network of potential subscribers referring to the idea of ”six degrees of separation,” and the attempt by the American television network ABC to conduct its own version of an experiment to test the same idea , through a “six degree” charity initiative using the concept on their website in an attempt to collect donations to a network of various charities.
Although Milgram’s experiment has already dealt with the subject, a manuscript by Pool and Kochen (Contacts and influence Social Networks, 1 (1978)) circulating around 1958 would have been the first version of the idea, but it was only published 20 years later, then not everyone gives credit.
The important thing about Pool and Kochen’s work is that they tried to give a mathematical structure to their “contact networks” following the path of other theorist as the mathematician. Rapoport (Spread of information through a population with socio-structural bias: I. Assumption of transitivity, 1953).
One prank to take this test is to use “Bancon’s Oracle” (by Kevin Bacon) on oracleofbacon.org and get the connection of Pope Francisco with Toshirô Mifune, for co-performances in films, the pope has already participated in two movies (see above)
Networks and global crises
22
May
Social networks are provoking an organic change in society as
a whole, it is already more evident than it was ten years ago, but networking is still confused with decentralization and there are strong conservative forces calling for a new social “hierarchy”.
The perception that this or that country is a country in “crisis” more acute than others is valid, but the truth is that it is those who learn the most from the crisis that can get out of it faster, the first lesson is that there is a society more attentive, more diversified and less able to support centralized and authoritarian schemes, but why then this wave?
Precisely because the vast majority of the “silent” now reveal the true face, that of convenience and coexistence with values that were only “supported” by those who suffered some form of exclusion, and I do not speak only financially, even if it is serious.
Edgar Morin points out that now the public space “gathers society in its diversity. The right, the left, the crazy people, the dreamers, the realists, the activists, the piadistas, the rebels – everyone. Abnormal would be legions in order, organized by a single flag and led by party bureaucrats. It is creative chaos, not the pre-established order. ”
All this can go back in a civil war, I agree with Manuel Castells: “civil war and social movements are incompatible!”, But social movements are now not only the masses maneuvered by unions and parties, this is what the caudillos fear, there is much distrust and according to Castells “parties are universally despised by most people,” because we know that we pay his salary (high) and do not do what they should do.
But it is necessary to save social values so as not to fall into the temptation of violence and authoritarianism that is what the radicals and their masses want, Castells says “you need a lot more courage not to be violent. Being violent is easy. ”
I am in Portugal that experienced a deep crisis and still feel reflexes of it, but they learned to live together, to talk and to have a little more patience with serious social problems, but this weekend there was a mega manifestation of teachers who had salaries affected and retirement (reform here) delayed, some may be entitled only at 70´s years old.
Clearing and revelation
04
May
Will there be in the whirlwind of answers and anguishes of the man of
our time, present more than ever in our daily thinking and also in those who seek the roots of our contemporary difficulties? What is the maze with no way out?
The answers are not the same, but the diagnoses are almost always the same, in addition to the pessimistic baumanian liquidity, the diagnosis is the needs of education for life, respect for diversity, income distribution, and man’s empowerment for this future .
Although the majority already feel and see the awakening of this new era, the reactions to the changes that are more than necessary, are urgent, there is greater balance in the planet, control of tax havens, elimination of atomic weapons, and especially respect for diversity.
What keeps us still are the closures in bubbles, which despite the “liquidity” can not be solid, since they are ephemeral and just look around you will find people from other world views, other cultures and other religions, this is solid and definitive.
What Strikes Us Attention Byung-Chul Han in The Expulsion of the Other, I believe is his most recent book, is that the tendency toward uniformity, even the desire for it, stems from not-so-solid values, the demand for a centralizing and ” strong, “the lack of truly open dialogue between religions, cultures, and especially ideologically centralized currents, will not carry out the task of a new, more collective, more dialogic and fraternal society.
There is no single answer, single party, Portugal for example, created the Gerigonça, but still we are slaves of convictions and bets on single totalitarian currents that have failed to much.
The biblical message is old, but it seems to have been little practiced, the time of bondage has passed, says the biblical passage, of Jesus to his fellows Jo (15,15) “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what your lord. I call you friends, for I have made known to you all that I have heard from my Father “, but slavery is there, says Chul Han:” global communication and of the likes only tolerates the most equal; the same does not hurt! “, this is today’s bondage.
The century of the Kantian lights
30
Apr
The eighteenth century was celebrated by many philosophers
as a century of Philosophy, it seemed that the Enlightenment had triumphed irreversibly, its idea of state, science as a way to remove man from darkness, at last everything seemed to go from strength to strength. First of all what was clarification for Kant, no doubt the greatest precursor, as Hegel was the synthesis of all idealistic philosophy of the Enlightenment.
Clarification (Aufklarung) would be the departure of man from his minority, of which he himself would be guilty, see that guilt here is not the Christian concept of deviation, but that of which the state would be the guardian.
So the minority is the inability to make use of his understanding without the direction of another individual, it is the perfect individualism, the man without the direction of any other individual, therefore only he is guilty of this “minority”, to depend on the other.
This is accomplished in the maxim of the categorical imperative: “he acts in such a way that his action can be universal”, and should not be confused with the golden rule: “do to others what you would like done to you”, because this includes the Other.
The idea that idealism has a golden thread leading to Platonism, which in turn can not be isolated from Aristotle’s “materialism”, is also mistaken in Gadamer: “The problem of historical consciousness,” whose The central point is precisely to separate idealistic and romantic consciousness from history, to reality.
The text of Plato’s Seventh Letter favors dialogue with the Other, the dialectical dialectic of facing opposites and knowing how to complete the so-called hermeneutical circle, where preconceptions can pass through a fusion of horizons and a later enlightenment that leads to new reformulation. Plato affirms in the Seventh Letter: “… only after rubbing so to speak, in each other, …. in these friendly colloquies of questions and answers … is that wisdom and understanding shine on each object … “(Plato 344 b-c).
For Gadamer, the Hermeneutic Circle, a true method of philosophizing, is a-Latvian, for: “Whatever Insight we may possess emerges in a finite human discourse, and therefore only partially … Our insights, in other words, are marked by our discursiveness. What is given to us is given from the concealment [léthe] and in a lapse of time back to it. Hence our human truth is a-letheia, never absolute. ” (GADAMER, 1980, pp. 103-104)
PLATO, Letter VII (Trad. Of the Greek and notes of Jose Trindade Santos and Juvino Maia Jr). Rio de Janeiro: PUC-Rio / Loyola, 2008.
GADAMER, H.G. Dialogue and Dialectic, eight hermeneutical studies on Plato, Binghamton, NY: Yale University, 1980, p. 91-123.
Life and the Vine
27
Apr
The tree that gives the fruits of the grape is particular,
first by the I am vine name because it gives the life to one of the fruits more rooted in the cultures due to the wine, and also is curious because its trunk and its shade are of little value, and there are still the aspect that it dries and must be pruned.
If civilizing processes are cyclical use of the vine metaphor seems conducive to understanding the ways of humanity, a generation grows on a particular culture, but almost always question exactly why young people look to the future, their future.
Who would have thought that the solid Roman empire would decay before the Persians, the Portuguese conquerors, the Napoleonic wars, the Soviet Union, and now the resilient money empire.
Analyst of diverse levels types, currents and thinkers of various specialties are convinced, civilization undergoes one of these changes and it is a critical time of options.
There are in our view three essential points: combating centralization of capital and corruption on a world scale, changing educational paradigms and the ecological issue.
At the heart of these discussions are still economic and governmental powers, often confused by the influence of techno-science that can do nothing without these powers, but the focus of discussion should be on valuing human dignity and the ecological issue.
The truth is that one can not discuss life, without here being the origin of life, the responsibility and dignity of the human “vine” that sometimes seems to dry with the grape tree, but then spring comes and it blooms, if the farmer is attentive.
As said the Bible passage Jo, 15: 1-3: “I am the true vine and my Father is the farmer. Every branch that does not bear fruit in me cuts off it; and every branch that bringeth forth fruit, he maketh it clean, that it may bear more fruit. You are already lean because of the word which I have spoken to you. “
What is the meaning of life ?
23
Apr
Edgar Morin and many other thinkers like Habermas say that 
an education, a philosophy of life is necessary, but the question of what life is is not simple.
Many times when we are faced with a serious problem, a loss or a radical change in our lives we ask what the meaning of life, the question without a definitive answer was faced by many philosophers, novelists, theologians and poets.
I remember the Song of Tamoio de Gonçalves Dias, “do not cry my son, do not cry that life is fighting hard, living is fighting …”, although it was only a poetry she helped me throughout life.
Shopenhauer (1851) and Tolstoy (1886) reflected the fact that our lives end up with more, so it is impossible to think of one theme without the other, since life ends in a point, has a finitude, refers us to infinity and Surely this has made all people think of beyond-death, in their cosmogonies.
Belief in God and an afterlife alleviates the situation, to the point that some philosophers admit that if God does not exist, human life is absurd, but Albert Camus and Thomas Nagel have accentuated the little objective significance of our lives, so we walk in the different direction of the infinite, the Nothingness, the nihilism, but the conflict between them awakens Ek-sistence, I Martin Heidegger stressed in Being and Time.
Existentialism is fundamental, because the thought in the line of Camus, leads to live what he described as “absurd man” who lives the life “without appeal”, in his view this person embrace life as fully as possible even without forget or deny some fundamental rational of it, this is at bottom the way of nihilism.
Nagel’s thinking is more cosmological, to the liking of some in our daily life, as the Brazilian Mario Sergio Cortella, the recognition of our insignificance before the cosmos, the light of this thought that seems to go towards the infinite, and will not, avoids an exaggerated and dramatic attitude, irony being the most appropriate, is a form of skepticism.
Both paths are attractive because they are facilitators, think about the essence, this is what “is” of the things of life and of the world, and what in fact they are, that is, what is the “being” in this world before the cosmos and the infinite?
This path also refers to the question of the principle, what we have already been and where we came from, must not be displaced from time but built in time.
Schopenhauer, A. The suffering of the world (1851 first publication).
Tolstoy, L. The death of Ivan Ilitch (1886 first publication).
Justice and Freedom for all
20
Apr
Amartya Sen reflects in his book The Idea of Justice on the
Challenges of Social Development and asserts that there are “plural and competing reasons for justice, all with a pretense of impartiality, though different – and rivals – of each other” (p. 43).
One of the fundamental aspects of his work, originally published in 2009, is that despite his 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics, it is even “the economy is supposed to be my profession, no matter what I do with my love affair with philosophy” (p. 303), reflecting that their concerns and response seek to go beyond this.
As Sen’s own reflections on knowledge indicate, the question he has about the ability to both enlighten and generate illusions, and this is what we call sustainable and distributive justice.
As he explains in another book Development as Freedom Field of Moral Theory of Economic Argument developed in his book, in which he argued that “development can be seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy” (Sen, 2000, p. 17), and any model based on restricting human freedom is not a sustainable model because it will be a source of conflicts and interests.
The role of education as well as being fundamental to sustainable social justice is also a model of moral and human development, and if there is lack of freedom, this development will never be complete, of course, without neglecting the aspect of economic development that guarantees life .
Thus the idea of single-mindedness, of philosophy or single-party politics, which has been at various times in history rejected by man, and which comes to light again is not politically, morally and socially sustainable.
The idea of a planetary citizenship today must be linked to the idea of a world of less economic discrepancies allied to the free expression of cultures and peoples, only then we can think of a planet for all.
A way forward in education
19
Apr
The basic basic education as stated in the first post of empathy, the
ability to resolve conflicts and it will not be possible with online education reach the levels of schooling for the lower age groups, but from the first schooling.
I call this age up to 10 or 12 years, it is possible to observe that online education helps and can be of great advancement, especially for children living in peripheral countries have a school performance capacity above what would be appropriate for their age, of course this child should enjoy normal channels of empathy and sociability of his age.
But at the higher level we can have higher quality jumps and provide high schooling on a world scale, just to give an example, India that still has alarming levels of health and poverty is a country that generates brains and high school students.
Massive Open Online Curses (MOOCs) is a type of open course offered through virtual learning environments, Web 2.0 tools or social networks that aim to offer a large number of students the opportunity to attend without physical presence in universities and without costs of housing, transport, etc.
A fake News ran this universe saying that the MOOCs were born in 2012 and died in 2014, but this is not true, the numbers prove this: the current numbers according to the Central-Class site, the number of online students is 58 million distributed in more than 700 universities, in 6850 courses, also the graphics of this site show increasing values.
In Brazil, large universities already have online courses, for example: FEA, from USP, has a course on Fundamentals of Administration (FEA / USP), available on the Veduca online education platform in Brazil. who wants to learn how to manage, another course is Social Responsibility and Sustainability of Organizations (PUC / RS), a PUC course in Rio Grande do Sul available in Miríada X, the Physics of São Carlos has The Basic Physics course (IFSC / USP) the course has a workload of 59 hours divided into 26 classes and UNB has the Bioenergetics course (UNB), which allows the interested party to choose to attend classes or obtain the certificate.
The (im) possible future of mankind
11
Apr
He criticizes the part of the technoprofetas, it is possible to make speculations, in the field of hypotheses, therefore,
on the future of humanity, this is the most recent book of Michio Kaku, where he explores in rich details of physical and theoretical possibilities how humanity can, in gradual steps and certainly looked at by ethical committees, to develop a sustainable civilization in outer space.
It is necessary to take a few steps back and see how much we have already achieved by reading another book of this renowned physicist and someone who goes in the field of hypotheses with fundamentals and theoretical basis for speculation.
The book “ The Physics of the Impossible” in his 2008 book, Good Portuguese Translation by the Bizâncio Editorial, shows in what field is physics, the advances already known and the promised ones. After going through the great physicists of the nineteenth century, James Maxwell, who questioned the fact that magnetic fields can become electric and vice versa in a clear discontinuity, and go to the possibilities of invisibility based on nanotechnology of metamaterials, it falls in reality and says: “most nanotechnology machines are nothing more than toys.” (page 51)
Kaku’s second quest is teleportation, Einstein’s famous article, in which he and other colleagues test the phenomenon of quanta teleporting without going through an intermediate stage, breaks with the Aristotelian principle to go from A to B through C intermediate, has been demonstrated in the last fifty years, despite the questionnaire of Einstein, Poldoslky and Rosen, reason why it became known as EPR phenomenon.
We have already posted on robots, now we want to talk about artificial intelligence, Kaku wrote: “The supreme irony is that machines can easily perform tasks that humans consider difficult, like multiplying large numbers or playing chess, but failed when asks them to do things that are extremely ‘easy’ for humans, such as walking in a room, recognizing faces, or chattering with a friend. ”
Take the speech from Marvin Minsky of MIT, one of the founders of AI, who summed up the problem as follows: “The story of AI is funny, for the first real deeds were beautiful things, like a machine demonstrating logic or did well in a course of calculation. But then we started trying to make machines that could answer questions about the kinds of simple stories that are found in a book in the first year of elementary school. Today there is no machine that can achieve this “(p.131).
We will explore in the next post, (im) real possibilities, in Kaku’s view.
The (in) visible relations and networks
09
Apr
One of the issues in focus today is social networks, they are not
of today, the problem is that today they are in evidence, but they continue to keep certain aspects of invisibility, confused with virtuality, make a historical analysis.
The networks of commerce in antiquity, by sea and by land, the invisible colleges, defined by Solla Price in her work “The development of science: historical, philosophical, sociological and economic analysis” of 1976 (in Brazilian edition), calls the scientific networks of collaborative networks, where researchers communicate, exchange information and experiences, means that even in the absence, through printed works and conferences, authors collaborate.
Essentially, a network is a web of nodes and links between nodes, although these participants are autonomous, the consequences of network connections can exceed their own limits by connecting to “out” through weak links. In the analysis of networks can be identified only for didactic reasons, three types: ego networking, global networking networks and networks of actors relationships, called TAN (Theory Actor-Network) with origin in the works of Michel Callon.
Airport networks, container transport networks around the world, Global networks are strongly influenced by the media, and they create a certain amount of invisibility, since the collaborative networks of publications are also called invisible colleges by authors like Solla Price, but accelerated by the speed of the media, electronic media is larger speed of publication and communication that prints it, then blog, twitter and the social media media like Facebook occupy a new role at the present time, but are not in themselves networks, but networks media.
Several measures can be thought of, the centrality of closeness of an actor measures how close a node is to all others, the greater the proximity measure, the intermediation betweenness measures the importance of a node in the circulation of information. So, for information effect, betweenness is the measure of control that an actor holds in the flow of information and closeness is the facility that an actor has of access to information.
The invisibility, emphasizing present in the “invisible” colleges in modernity, is relative to the process of communication and information that can go beyond the actor actors along the network, virtuality in turn refers to the potentiality of increasing the capacity of the network
