The Matthew Effect is the power law of small world networks

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Posted on 10th February 2010 by Judy Breck in Findability

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John Wilbanks writes in SEEDMAGAZINE this week about the Matthew Effect: “When it comes to scientific publishing and fame, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” The effect is named from this explanation by Jesus of a parable: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” —Matthew 25:29

Wilbanks describes in the article, that the Matthew effect is observable in scientific publication: “famous scientists reap more credit than unknowns.” As it does in the parable, the effect on scientists ends up causing “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Something very interesting is going on here. The Matthew effect is a characteristic of small world networks. The effect has several names: Pareto principle, power law, long tail, and preferential attachment. Google essentially operates on this principle because the links most favored and attached go to the top of the search engine results.

What seems to be happening for scientific publication is NOT that this principle is operating, but quite the opposite. Peer review and other non-network mechanisms are actually gumming up the networks: the most creative and productive scientists are not getting the recognition.

This false Matthew-like effect is critical to recognize for online findability. That findability MUST make the best resources the richest or the vetting visions for the open knowledge commons are badly downgraded.

And lo! After describing the false elevations occurring from scientific citation, Wilbanks writes:

Multidimensionality is one of the only counters to the Matthew Effect we have available. In forums where this kind of meritocracy prevails over seniority, like Linux or Wikipedia, the Matthew Effect is much less pronounced. And we have the capacity to measure each of these individual factors of a scientist’s work, using the basic discourse of the Web: the blog, the wiki, the comment, the trackback. We can find out who is talented in a lab, not just who was smart enough to hire that talent. As we develop the ability to measure multiple dimensions of scientific knowledge creation, dissemination, and re-use, we open up a new way to recognize excellence. What we can measure, we can value.

Surely, this fairness emerging from measurability in the open internet is the actual Matthew effect: the power law. The deserving scientists rise to the head of the curve and others trail out into the curve’s long tail. What scientists have been griping about as the Matthew effect is constricted by peer review and ambitions. In the open internet, that sort of thing is much harder to do and the real Matthew effect determines who gets rich — selecting there, as Google does, the better quality stuff.

Hat tip to John Wilbanks: Great article in SEED, but I could not resist tweaking the irony of the Matthew effect language.

Ignoring intertwingularity was education’s shark jump

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Posted on 7th February 2010 by Judy Breck in Findability | Schools we now have

Jumping the shark, as we see Fonzie doing, is the point at which something absurd is done, followed by ongoing efforts to revive an enterprise. Ignoring the intertwingularity is the shark jump for established education. Schooling is on a path of increasingly under serving youngsters and education as it was known in the 20th century is petering out.

Meanwhile there is great news: the connection handschooling can make for a student to the intertwingularity is now real and quickly getting more effective and spreading.

The reason handschooling is so hopeful is that it can put an individual student in touch with the intertwingularity. That connection can be made regardless of the “schooling” situation and status of that individual student, who could: be in a school where students score high on standards, be in a failing school that does poorly by schooling standards, schooled at home, not have a school to go to.

The fact of the matter is that handschooling — when it tips with enough of the world’s youngsters connected to the intertwingularity — will force the reconfiguring of established education. That reconfiguring is sketched whimsically in stories taking place in the future in my book Intertwingle, if you are interested. The point of this website is to bring handschooling into focus now.

So what is the intertwingularity?

The word was coined in 1974 by Ted Nelson, as Wikipedia states, “to express the complexity of interrelations in human knowledge.” The beautiful, spontaneous, serendipitous gift to learning that has emerged in the internet is a network that does indeed interface the complexities of interrelation of human knowledge. That network is what I call in handschooling.com the intertwingularity. At the end of this post, I have included, from my book 109 IDEAS FOR VIRTUAL LEARNING, some paragraphs describing the first time I realized the intertwingularity was out there. (Then ten years ago, I did not yet know of Ted Stevens’ word, but I saw exactly what he described — and it was, as I write below, mysterious.)

A brief history of the intertwingularity so far:

  • What is known by humankind has poured into the open internet and there, following network laws, emerged as the intertwingularity.
  • Established education has held the internet at arms length, attempting at best to organize and judge some of the online knowledge, but not deigning to recognizes or engage the intertwingularity of knowledge formed naturally in the network.
  • Education practice has continued to divide and disconnect human knowledge into standards and grades, continuing the increasingly dark art of shoehorning knowledge relations into standards and curricula (instead of letting them intertwingle).
  • Opposite to education’s standards and curricula, the interwingulatity is emergent from the knowledge placed online by experts and authorities in knowledge fields, and is naturally vetted by network laws (think how Google puts the best stuff at the top).
  • By being individually owned and operated, the mobile internet browser has became able to connect its owner to the complexities of interrelation of human knowledge — the intertwingularity.
  • The intertwingularity has created a global knowledge commons where everyone who connects to it literally learns from the same virtual page — with very big time implications for world understanding.
  • The future of learning has become not about what we do in schooling: it is now about how soon we engage our learning generation with the intertwingularity.
  • We can connect individual kids to the intertwingularity right now through handschooling. Let’s do it! (more…)

Research open-access chatter grows, and grows findability

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Posted on 26th January 2010 by Judy Breck in Findability

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“Suddenly people are talking about open access on campus in a way they hadn’t before,” says Susan Gibbons, vice provost and dean of River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester. “And it’s going to push the need for repositories front and center again.”

Ms. Gibbons’ prediction is from an article today in WIRED CAMPUS that describes how and why the University of Rochester is creating new institutional repository software.

Included in what will be offered to authors to lure them to contribute their papers and dissertations are “collaborating with colleagues” and customized “researcher pages.” In findability terms, the collaborating (1) gives link love to the ideas that interest colleagues and (2) puts online customized landing pages. Thus, the Rochester is not only making knowledge in their depository open, it is giving the ideas that attract collaboration some highly merited findability.

What are these two findability principles? (more…)

Online knowledge organizes itself better than educators can do it

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Posted on 25th January 2010 by Judy Breck in Findability

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mirrorToBrainA recent GoldenSwamp.com post posits how knowledge for learning is growing as a superorganism from which everyone on earth can learn. That superorganism is a network that lives within the open internet. The first image (above) sketches how the learning mind, which is a network, can directly apprehend patterns of knowledge from the network that forms the superorganism online of what is known by humankind. That apprehending can be thought of as the mind mirroring patterns it encounters on the internet.

If the learning mind can apprehend knowledge patterns from the emergent knowledge online, why then is it that we spend $$ billions every year on systems of knowledge delivery to education that look something like the second image (below)? Would it not make more sense to curate the online knowledge nodes and network, refining them to signal among themselves to create cognitive patterns to mirror directly into learning minds?
mirrorToCurriculum
The education establishment has assumed from the beginning of the internet era that it was they who should judge, select, and organize knowledge to be learned that is located on the internet. There is a fatal flaw in those assumptions: in the open internet, the knowledge self-judges, self-selects, and organizes itself better than those things can be done by educators because human knowledge is itself a network and obeys network laws. My statement here is radical, I know. It is also a fact of the internet that is morphing learning resources into the superorganism of what is known by humankind. It is a truth too beautiful not to be true and enormously hopeful for the global future.

The subject networks in the images above are from the Map of Science, which is described in PLoS One.  The networking — linking — among subjects has occurred naturally. When you look at the map you are seeing real world online cognitive connectivity.

Eric Schmidt: “Information is a tremendous equalizer”

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Posted on 22nd January 2010 by Judy Breck in Findability

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One of the giants of the network industry predicts the internet will deliver all information to all people. Speaking to Carnegie Mellon University graduates, Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt said:


Why is ubiquitous information so important? Why is it so important that we have access to all this? It’s a tremendous equalizer. In our lifetime literally — certainly in yours if not mine — essentially every human being on the planet will have access to every piece of information on the planet. This is a remarkable achievement. God knows what these people will do, and it’s going to be pretty amazing.

The CEO of Google is not talking about building universities on a physical campuses the way Andrew Carnegie and the Mellon family did in Pittsburgh in the boom times of the industrial age. He is telling us access to all information to all people will be through the internet.

The 2009 CMU graduates to whom Schmidt spoke are information-elites, having attended one of the world’s great universities where information is open and plentiful. Graduates in 2009 from most other universities and colleges have had less access to information through their school. The slide away from information equality is steep and fast from there to those who do not graduate or even attend traditional schools. There is no chance that we can provide ubiquitous information and the equality it delivers by building more schools across the planet.

The inequity of information delivery will be overcome! Ubiquitous information and the equality it will bring will be sped up by optimizing open access online during the five or so years ahead it will take for mobile internet access to spread to essentially everyone on earth.

Via: Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine

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