[Apologies for cross-postings]
[This announcement is available online at
http://www.icr.ethz.ch/taicon/watts.pdf (1 MB)]
Invitation to a lecture given by
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DUNCAN WATTS
Columbia University
who will speak on
Six Degrees:
The Science of a Connected Age
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on Wednesday, January 12, 2005: 18:00
Audimax, Main Building, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH)
Zurich, Switzerland.
Professor Stephen Borgatti, Boston College, will deliver teleconferenced
comments broadcast from the Swiss House for Advanced Research and
Education (SHARE), Cambridge, Mass. An apéro will follow the talk.
We've all heard of the small world phenomenon - the idea that each one
of us is connected to everyone else through only “six degrees of
separation.” But where did this idea come from? This talk sketches out
the scholarly history of the small world problem, from its origins
in sociology up to the recent explosion of work in physics and
mathematics that uses it as a central reference point. The lecture also
discusses the relevance of the "six degrees" theory to a range of
phenomena, from job hunting and organizations solving complex problems,
to the spread of disease and the cascade-like dynamics of cultural fads.
This lecture is the inaugural event of
TAICON (The Trans-Atlantic Initiative on Complex Organizations and
Networks) organized by
Prof. Lars-Erik Cederman, ETH, and
Prof. David Lazer, Harvard University
TAICON is a trans-Atlantic community, based at Harvard and the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), that brings
together research on social networks and complexity.
Additional speakers during the academic year 2004/05:
Professor John Holland, University of Michigan
Wednesday, April 13, 2005: 18:00
(Teleconferenced talk from SHARE)
Professor Frank Schweitzer, ETH
Monday, June 6, 2005: 18:00
Further information can be found under:
http://www.icr.ethz.ch/taicon
--
Nils B. Weidmann
International Conflict Research, ETH Zurich
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