Just read this article in Scientific American about the qualities of a network of relationships … don't worry, I won't loose you, gentle reader, in a fury of mathematical jargon … in fact, even the original article wasn't too deep. Far from being just a geeky concept, scale-free networks are patterns that have deep importance for everyone … Allow me to demonstrate.

I think a lot of us used to think that social relationships were kind of like a "highway system" for whether you were a huge city or a small one, you didn't necessarily have more highways just because of your size. Portland, Oregon is an order of magnitude larger than my home town of St. George, Utah, but Portland has three highways intersecting it, and my home town had two.

But people aren't like this … each person does not have the same number of people in their rolodex as the next person … People's relationship is more like the airline industry, where there are a few nodes (cities) with lots of flights, but most of the cities just have a single prop plane that flies out once a week with the mail.

Why is this difference significant? Well, first of all, it does explain that game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where everyone is connected to Kevin Bacon through less than six nodes … my sister, Michele Abrams, was in a movie (Cool World) with Brad Pitt, who was in a movie (The Mexican) with Julia Roberts, who was in a movie (Flatliners) with Mr. Bacon...

It also explains why disease spreads so fast. There are a few people who pass a disease around quickly, so that even people who know one other person in the whole world, gets infected from that one person.

So, if we, as a people. were to try to vaccinate part of the population, we have two choices … either vaccinate everyone or just vaccinate the "hubs" (people who have lots of relationship connections). Obviously, if we can't supply enough vaccines for everyone, it is clear the answer is … Here is the part that I don't like.

How would we determine who these "hubs" are? Clearly, politicians who meet lots of people. CEOs and the executives of large companies have lots of connections. Maybe even actors and T.V. personalities … Does this mean that fame does make you more important? As you can tell, ranking people this way can be … well, icky for those of us who were raised thinking that democracy was akin to equality.

More Clicks on Scale-Free Networks:

ComputerWorld's Introduction to Scale-Free Networks in the context of the Internet.
Check out Jon Udell's thoughts on this subject.