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Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life. Penguin, 2003.
Book overview found at:
http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780452284395,00.html?strSrchSql=barabasi/Linked_Albert-Laszlo_Barabasi
A cocktail party.? A terrorist cell.? Ancient bacteria.? An international conglomerate.
All are networks, and all are a part of a surprising scientific revolution. Albert-László Barabási, the nation’s foremost expert in the new science of networks, takes us on an intellectual adventure to prove that social networks, corporations, and living organisms are more similar than previously thought. Grasping a full understanding of network science will someday allow us to design blue-chip businesses, stop the outbreak of deadly diseases, and influence the exchange of ideas and information. Just as James Gleick brought the discovery of chaos theory to the general public, Linked tells the story of the true science of the future.
Barabasi's Page at Physics, Notre Dame:
http://www.nd.edu/~alb/
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Roland Barthes. Sade/Fourier/Loyola. Hill and Wang, 1976.
A treatise on the nature of philosophical creation. Barthes examines the parallel impulses of Loyola, the Jesuit saint, Sade, the renowned and sometimes pornographic libertine philosopher, and Fourier, the utopian theorist. All three, he makes clear, have been founders of languages Loyola the language of divine address: Sade, the language of erotic freedom: and Fourier, the language of social perfection and happiness. Each language is an all-enveloping system, a "secondary language" that isolates the adherent from the conventional world. The object of this book, is not to decipher the content of these respective works, but to consider Sade, Fourier, and Loyola as creators of text.
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Manuel DeLanda. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. Continuum, 2006.
Book overview found at:
http://www.continuumbooks.com/Books/detail.aspx?ImprintID=2&CountryID=2&BookId=125498
Subject Continental Philosophy, Philosophy and Political, Social and Legal Philosophy
Imprint Continuum
Synopsis
A new and highly original interrogation of social philosophy from one of the world's leading theorists
Description
Manuel DeLanda is a distinguished writer, artist and philosopher. In his new book, he offers a fascinating look at how the contemporary world is characterized by an extraordinary social complexity. Since most social entities, from small communities to large nation-states, would disappear altogether if human minds ceased to exist, Delanda proposes a novel approach to social ontology that asserts the autonomy of social entities from the conceptions we have of them.
Table Of Contents
Introduction
1. Assemblages Against Totalities
2. Assemblages Against Essences
3. Persons and Networks
4. Organisations and Governments
5. Cities and Nations
Manuel DeLanda is a distinguished writer, artist and philosopher. He began his career in experimental film, later became a computer artist and programmer and is now Adjunct Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, USA. He is the author of the bestselling books War in the Age of Intelligent Machines and A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History, and of Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, also published by Continuum.
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An extensive annotated bibliography of DeLanda's writings can be found here via Virginia Tech's CDDC:
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/host/delanda/
Review of DeLanda's New Philosophy of Society
ReplyDeletehttp://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=541
Review of Barabasi's Linked
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/linked/