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Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
scubacuda writes "Clay Shirky has written an excellent article entitled "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality." Simply put, diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality: "A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on." A must read for anyone interested in the statistics, fairness, and power relations of blogging."
this subject is covered in the book Linked: The New Science of Networks by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, who focuses on the prevalence of power laws in web traffic and Internet router connectivity. There are also some pretty good explanations on why this makes the Internet more resilient than a randomly linked network but also more vulnerable to malicious acts. This book was covered on slashdot previously. I found it to be a good read.
A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on.
Slashdot.
I can't see how that could ever happen here.
<Simpson's Comic Store Guy Voice>
I trump you with my mighty karma, "Worst post, ever!"
</Simpson's Comic Store Guy Voice>
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is also one reason why The Sims Online is completely flopping. Sure, you might be able to get the in-game money to build a great house with lots of accessories, but not everyone can have 15 guests at all times. So, all power is concentrated in certain places, driven by reputation which is picked up early in the process.
Latecomers and people who don't play much end up screwed if they had their hearts set on being the social spot of the game.
Jason Kottke has posted a similar article about Weblogs and power laws. He points to this thread for getting him thinking--and guesses Shirky was inspired there as well.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
I'm sure almost everyone has been the victim of unfair moderation (I know I have), and if you're the victim for too long, you fight back.
There's no such thing as "unfair" moderation. Fairness is not outcome-based, it's an equal application of the rules. Every registered slashdotter has the opportunity to moderate or meta-moderate. Anyone posting as an anonymous coward doesn't. These conditions are presented ratherly clearly.
If more posters, particularly those who complain about "unfair" moderation, would focus more on content then simply getting posted, much of the basis for this matter would simply go away.
Regardless of how much a particular group of people might prefer anarchy to a societal group the chances that such a form of society maintaining that freedom approach 0 quickly. It is inevitable that someone will be called on to make a decision that will effect the rest of the group at some time. That was the fundamental flaw of Marx's theory. Most humans, by nature, need someone to guide and direct their lives. As a society grows, the need for leaders, or elites, grows as well since it would be all-consuming for each person to know each aspect of what was going on in society. Can you image having to understand all the aspects of society and power structure, even in an area as small as a town? While science has developed a chaos theory, social science seems to follow the reverse. It seems that no matter which society you choose to follow it is eventually going to begin to show power difference, class seperation, and disassociated social networks. All in all I found it very intersting how the bell curve was worked into the discussion. Coming from a math/comp sci background and moving to communications I am always looking for a bridge between the two.
Capitalism doesn't work any better than communism/socialism. That's why all of the countries that "work" have hybrid systems that combine the best (ideally) of both ideologies.
In Europe, you get nationalized health care. But you also get your choice of wine.
In the US, you get your choice of wine. But you also get tax-funded roads and schools.
Ignore the die-hard flag wavers. They know about as much about socioeconomics as they do about diet and exercise.
And I'll say it again...
"Equality of Opportunity does not Equal Equality of Results".
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Free speech is a right. Being heard is a privilege.
-- People who hate Windows use Linux. People who love UNIX use BSD.
If this pattern is truly global, then it probably means that a few years the Music world will be pretty much the same as it is now, except without the Recording Industry. People who are predicting the demise of record companies say there will be no more Michael Jacksons, just an amorphous mass of musicians offering their music free on the web and making a living off concert dates. But according to the Power Law, there will be superstars even when the star-making machinery is gone.
...he's described any social system with a large number of participants. At first glance one would think that the World Wide Web and the grand vision of "anyone can be a publisher" would move us away from cliques and one or two very popular entities but the reverse has been true.
For instance, despite how easy it is for anyone to start a Slashdot or Fark ripoff site no one commands as much traffic in their genre as either site. In fact as more people get online, the proportion of those that end up of being Slashbots or Farkheads versus migrating to their "competition" is quite disproportional.
One could also say why despite the fact that the music sharing networks allow anyone to get their music heard by the masses they end up being clogged with the same top 40 shit from the radio from boy bands, Britney Spears and wannabe hip hop thugs.
I just guess that this might be just a by product of human gatherings, even if not in physical terms.
Paraphrasing Lewis: you can't explain, but it is there. You cannot really tell whether you're in or out, but once you're in (or out, for that matter) you can surely affirm it. Once you get there, you realize that there are more people who is more in than you. If your really in, you wish you were out, because being really in usually is not exciting as you once thought when you were out. You cant draw boundaries, but you know who else is in or out. You can push someone out, but it is really hard to get in. It doesnt matter where you are, but you know, and cant explain
That's a genius!
For something with a real distribution (either bell curve, or in this case power), a REALLY small number of datapoints shows you the pattern, if the datapoints were drawn randomly.
I would guess if you picked just a few 100, the graph would look the same.
In this case, what is more suspect is that we have inclusion of the biggest, most popular weblogs, which implies they were included by hand. Therefore the sample is probably not random.
In addition, there is no definitive list or way to calculate all blogs, so by defenition his sample comes from a subset of all blogs that were in some way listed or linked to. There are probably a whole strata of blogs that were guaranteed not to be in the analysis, because they werent included in whatever source material he drew his sample from.
You are entirely incorrect. The validity of a random statistical sampling is not related to the size of the entire group that is being sampled, only the size of the small sample that is used. In other words, a poll of X people out of any number total population will always have some Z percent sampling error that is directly related to X. Political polls, neilson ratings, and every other such figure you see reported is based on this statistical fact.
;)
As for the actual math involved, I dont remember exactly.
Guess Im going to have to shoot for interesting instead of informative
Sorry, but the trolls created their own mess. People get modded down for a reason. Sure, sometimes elitists will mod down a post they don't agree with (asy, almost anything pro-Microsoft) but for the most part the things that get modded down are either stupid, inflamitory, insulting, off-topic etc...
If these people didn't want their posts to get modded down they'd find a contructive soultion to their problems. Say, staying on topic, or abiding by basic rules of etiquette (by saying "I don't agree with your position" rather than "U R a dumass!").
This is not like life where one can born be into poverty. The problems anyone has here are of their own creation.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
The ugly truth of the matter is that Life really IS fair. We just don't like the rules.
I don't care WHO reads my journal. My journal is basically for an audience of one...ME. As journals should be. If you like what you read, fine, enjoy. If you don't, you don't.
As far as the "zoo" system...the proof in the pudding is in who has befriended me and who is a "freak" of mine. I basically have a handful of crapflooders as freaks. Whoopee-doo. The folks who have befriended me are with few exceptions people who contribute positively to Slashdot on an ongoing basis.
Sure, I'm not a "superstar" here. Frankly, if nominated for Slashdot superstardom I would not run, and if elected I would not serve. But I try my best to be a good contributor and actually add something to discussions.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Sing along, kids: direct, participatory democracy does not scale.
I've been saying this for years; Clay provides some excellent scientific evidence showing it, and writes about it a whole lot better than I can. Must be why he's further up the curve than I am.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
From, "Tyranny of the Moment" Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Sorry, but I call BS. If you were only writing a journal for you and you alone, you would not have it on the internet. You want positive responses to your thoughts, otherwise you would keep them private. Which is fine, I don't care, you can do what you want. But don't pretend that you are only writing for yourself when you publish it to the world.
That is my opinion in a general sense. I think people should be able to keep online journals, I wouldn't take that away from them. But on a more personal note, I think publishing journals is kind of dumb, because for the most part the average person has nothing interesting to say. And yes, you probably fall in that category, although most bloggers wouldn't think I am referring to them. I have known people (actual people, not virtual) who do the journal thing online, and they are the kind of people who generally like to talk a lot about nothing interesting. They throw around ideas without thought, pretend to have some kind of interesting writing style, and are pretty annoying. They talk simply for the sake of talking, be it online or in person. The online journal just gives them a worldwide audience to annoy. I know this will offend all you "bloggers" out there, and I do realize that I am posting comments on Slashdot. But this is in relation to a topic, not just me rambling about what I had for breakfast or what I think a really cool invention would be.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
But I submit this, there are always selection rules in effect, both internal and external, conscious and subconscious. People found their way to a particular region. and a particular college. and a particular living space. and so on. Likewise, a sequence of events lead people to a particular online community; whether it be newsgroup, bulletin board or blog.
And the key word here is community. And as such we bring with it all the rules, semi-rules and baggage from our own personal social models. Effective communication and means to reach consensus become increasingly difficult as you add more members. Quickly, you reach a point where it is impossible for everyone to 'assemble' to air their own viewpoints and any meaningful discussion becomes impossible. The signal-to-noise ratio rapidly increases and the only apparently viable method of being heard above the din is to enhance the 'strength' of your output, ie shout. Direct representative political systems work best on a small, local level. As you increase the membership of the system, particular over a geographically-diverse area, the system alligns itself into a hierarchical system (eg, mayors, governors, Representatives, President). Deference in the matter of representation, at least in the US, was to be assigned to one's peers. In theory then, the collective voice of the 'people' would be coalesced into a single voice in Government. Now, whether or not this happens in practice, however, is another matter for discussion.
In the matters of discourse, it is only natural that there emerges a system of trusted 'authorities.' Gurus, teachers, whathaveyou, that again represent the consolidation in a particular area. These are people (or resources) that must be appealed to in order to bring order and structure to discussion. These acquire their credentials through structures created and recognized by the various communities. These 'super nodes' are looked to from many eyes and their voices reach many people simultaneously.
Now, the balkinization of communities is again only natural. A community in general, but an online on in particular, tends to abide by the same effects that others have observed about the internet (web pages, p2p nodes,etc). 'Neighborhoods' asemble around common perceptions, ideas and the overal cohesiveness of the structure. Friendship groups, for instance, ebb and flow in size, generate and dissolve over time. Naturally, if people can't get something from a particular group, they will move elsewhere. And again, as size grows, systems tend to self-organize, collecting around authority figures (in the sense described before) and around certain core beliefs.
In the end though, one shouldn't be surprised at this turn. However, blog-ing communities and the Internet overall do offer a unique advantage: you can always go buffet style, sampling all that various groups have to offer.
That is much more descriptive of socialism (which is extremely heirarchical and stratified; as seen in North Korea).
In capitalism, everyone is in charge of their own economic lives. Economic autonomy; people make their own economic decision and determine what is a fair trade with others.
The internet and any system that promotes this kind of anarchy will be the same way. That is why we need some kind of democratic structure to be applied
Democracy is a great way to control government, but should not be used to control personal decisions (including economic ones). Those should be left to individuals, not outside coercive forces.
"so that the needs of everyone don't get trampled by those of the first few whose only accomplishment was getting there first" How many of those who "got here first" are still big and powerful? Yahoo comes to mind, but most of the others that started out back then are long gone and forgotten. Anyone still have a home page on Xoom? Anyone use Pathfinder as a portal?
Wouldn't it simply stand to reason, when all restrictions were removed, that the more capable people would rise to the top? Respectfully, I don't need charts to tell me this. IMHO, using a barometer of "equality" with regards to freedom and diversity is a political interpretation, not a scientific one. On the right wing, you have the "survival of the fittest," and on the left wing you have the "level playing field for everyone."
To say diversity and choice lead to inequality implies that someone's inalienable rights are being violated. Others might rejoice that the proof is in the pudding: when the barriers are removed, the most capable people can rise to the top. To say people are experiencing inequality ignores their potential mediocrity, IMO.
It may be true that direct, participatory democracy does not scale, but that observation alone doesn't tell us what system is better.
:-)
Direct democracy doesn't work because people don't have the time or desire to decide everything. For the unimportant matters, we would like to delegate our decision to someone else who thinks like us.
The problem with most current systems of government is that we end up delegating too many of our choices. Our current system was designed when voting was expensive, so a few important plebiscites and an election every few years was all the participation that was practical.
I think we can do better now and let every citizen decide what level of participation they want, on each issue. Instead of votes, we should have proxies. We could delegate that proxy to a worthy politician for most routine matters. However, when an important issue comes up, we could either vote ourselves, or delegate the proxy for that issue to someone else. With a bit of work, we could even categorize decisions and delegate social decisions to one politician and economic decisions to another, for example. We may not be individually heard, but if we pick our proxies well, they can express our opinion for us, kind of like Clay could for you
We could certainly do better than our current system, even if pure direct participation is not possible.
-- Pot is safer than Beer