***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/ ***** I agree with the injustice that old and current work in social networks is being ignored. However, this may be the cost we pay for joining a larger intellectual community - literature written in our local dialect is forgotten. The benefit to us is that there is a great deal of interest in our field. Let's take advantage of the opportunities. Phillip Bonacich Department of Sociology University of California Los Angeles, CA 90095 (310) 825-3017 -----Original Message----- From: Social Networks Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carter T. Butts Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 6:25 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Erroneous facts / NyT article on social networks ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/ ***** Mark Newman wrote: > And Rapoport touched on the same ideas even earlier in his work > on friendship networks, although he didn't specifically discuss > power-law degree sequences. > Indeed. For that matter, there was a lot of very wonderful technical work by physicists, biologists, and others on both social and biological networks back in the late 1940s/early 1950s in the _Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics_ (of which Rapoport's work was part). My sense is that there is a fair amount of awareness of this literature within the modern network community, but I'm not sure to what extent the "scale-free" crowd is cognizant of it.... > Still, as David Gibson points out, one shouldn't blame Duncan Watts for > this. In fact, Duncan gives ample credit to the pioneers of the field > in his new book. I also noted that he was quoted as asking people to tone down the hype....not that I expect the message to sink in. Looks like we're in for a bubble/crash cycle here -- I hope someone here is collecting data on this! -Carter _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message. _____________________________________________________________________ SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social network researchers (http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/). To unsubscribe, send an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.