Here’s an interesting TED Talk from 2009 by Nicholas Christakis. It’s about how social networks of many kinds, not just online social networks, can be used to detect epidemics a lot earlier than previously.

We’re not just talking flu epidemics here, although he does discuss a study of the H1N1 virus they conducted within the student population at Harvard. We’re also talking about the spread of ideas and behaviours within networks.

While watching the video, I couldn’t help but think about the book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Amazon Assoc. link) by Malcolm Gladwell, which addresses similar ideas about the spread of ideas and viruses. If you’re interested in human social networks in general, it’s well worth a read too, if you haven’t already.

Needless to say, I find this stuff pretty interesting. Do check out this (20 min) TED Talk if you do too.

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I think this TED Talk by Iqbal Quadir is a poignant and powerful reminder that connectivity equals productivity. For those of us who use the web and smart mobile devices daily, it’s easy to forget just how much these enable greater productivity, even if some of our time is spent on more trivial or entertaining activities.

In this inspiring, embedded video, social entrepreneur Iqbal Quadir tells how his experiences as a kid in Bangladesh, and later as an investment banker in New York, led him to start a mobile phone operator connecting 80 million rural Bangladeshi.

In the process, he became a champion of bottom-up development, rather than giving increasing amounts of aid money to top down development, which seems not to be working very well, if at all. In fact, he maintains that it only empowers authorities to maginalise citizens. Even in countries that have grown rich from oil reserves, autocratic regimes have grown hugely wealthy, while poverty among citizens remains entrenched.

Enter Iqbal Quadir. Not long ago in Bangladesh, only one in 500 people had access to a telephone. Quadir points out that “Vasts amounts of wasted time results. The only way people can depend on each other is to connect to each other, which leads to productivity.”

Watch the video to find out how he overcame the significant hurdles involved in what turned out to be a massive connectivity project and business. How could poor people afford to use mobile phones? Who would invest in such a project in such a poor country? This video is a must see.

via Entrepreneur

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Here’s a TED Talk by Clay Shirky from June of this year. Shirky’s work focuses on “the rising usefulness of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, wireless networks, social software and open-source development.”

It’s a talk well worth watching. He makes some great points about where media in general is heading and gives some good examples of the ways the media landscape is rapidly changing . One particular example illustrates how, in terms of using social media for campaigns, supporters can be convened but not controlled.

Shirky ends with a question that I think a lot about myself: how can we make best use of this medium, even though it means changing the way we’ve always done it?

Related Posts:

• How social networks can predict epidemics, from ideas to flu viruses [Video].
• Connectivity equals productivity, here’s a powerful reminder.