Networks and the Spread of Ideas in the Past: Strong Ties, Innovation and Knowledge Exchange gathers contributions from an international group of scholars to reconsider the role that strong social ties play in the transmission of new ideas, and their crucial place in network analyses of the past. Drawing on case studies that range from the early Iron Age Mediterranean to medieval Britain, the contributing authors showcase the importance of looking at strong social ties in the transmission of complex information, which requires relationships structured through mutual trust, memory, and reciprocity. They highlight the importance of sanctuaries in the process of information transmission, the power of narrative in creating a sense of community even across geographical space, and the control of social systems in order to facilitate or stifle new information transfer. Networks and the Spread of Ideas in the Past demonstrates the value of searching the past for powerful social connections, offers us the chance to tell more human stories through our analyses, and represents an essential new addition to the study and use of networks in archaeology and history. The book will be useful to academics and students working in the Digital Humanities, History, and Archaeology.

A landmark tour of the new science of "idea flow" outlines revolutionary insights into the mysteries of collective intelligence and social influence, explaining the virtually unlimited data sets of today's digital technologies and the considerable accuracy of information from social networks.

A fascinating deep dive on innovation from the New York Times bestselling author of How We Got To Now and Unexpected Life The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery--these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson's answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out the approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality.

PhD.

Examines the relationship between social networks and religious transmission to reappraise how new religious ideas spread in the Roman Empire.

Are all film stars linked to Kevin Bacon? Why do the stock markets rise and fall sharply on the strength of a vague rumour? How does gossip spread so quickly? Are we all related through six degrees of separation? There is a growing awareness of the complex networks that pervade modern society. We see them in the rapid growth of the internet, the ease of global communication, the swift spread of news and information, and in the way epidemics and financial crises develop with startling speed and intensity. This introductory book on the new science of networks takes an interdisciplinary approach, using economics, sociology, computing, information science and applied mathematics to address fundamental questions about the links that connect us, and the ways that our decisions can have consequences for others.

A Global Idea outlines how youth—as shown by the Arab Spring uprisings and subsequent state responses—became a prominent social and political category during the first two decades of the twenty-first century in the Middle East. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interview data, and textual analysis, Mayssoun Sukarieh explains that the spread of youth as an important category is linked to the operation of a "global youth development complex," a diverse transnational network of state, private sector, civil society, and international development aid organizations that worked through key urban areas such as Washington, DC, Amman, and Dubai. In its analysis of the arrival, extension, and embedding of the youth development complex in the Middle East during this period, A Global Idea addresses a broader question that is of global and not just regional concern. How are certain ideas that are central to the working and reproduction of global capitalism able to travel the world so that they are found virtually everywhere?