The Tyranny of the Link
We were told the Internet would decentralize power. That globalization would flatten hierarchies. That connectivity would be a democratizing force. What Professor Albert-László Barabási shows in his brilliant book Linked, is that all of these hopes were based on a fundamental misunderstanding.
Connection does not equal equality. It never did. What Barabási’s network science reveals is that the structure of our systems, their wiring, their topology, makes some forms of inequality not just common but mathematically inevitable. He states
‘The rich get richer phenomenon is not unique to money,’ ‘…it pervades society and nature, and it is encoded in the very fabric of our connected world. The more connected a node is, the more likely it is to receive new links.’
The lesson is cruel: the moment nodes connect, inequality emerges. The moment ideas spread, a few dominate. This is the case with the networks behind the Web, Hollywood, scientists, and even the cell.
