In the first episode of Season 2 of the Cohere podcast, Bill Johnston and Dr. Lauren Vargas explore the concept of "network" as it relates to online and real-life communities. In the episode they cover:

The many definitions of "Network"

• The technical infrastructure linking people and things
• The implicit and dynamic connections between people in a group (aka social graph)
• The activity of actively seeking connections
• Special places vs special people

How a network relates to a community "The difference between a community and a network is that you belong to a community, but a network belongs to you." Zygmund Bauman - as quoted in El Pais, Jan '12

The Network Epochs

• Mobility & Transportation Networks
• Analog Communications (telegraph / phone / TV)
• The commercial Internet
• Internet + Social Graph (the dawn of Facebook)
• Internet + Social Graph + Algorithms (the dominance of Facebook)
• What's next?

Additional sources referenced in the show: "The Seventh Sense" - Joshua Cooper Ramo "Network Science" - Albert-Laszlo Barabasi "The Square and the Tower" - Niall Ferguson "Mother Earth, Motherboard", Wired - Neal Stephenson "The Hype Machine" - Sinan Aral "Fixing the Social Media Crisis" - Exponential View podcast host Azeem Azhar interviews Sinan Aral "Connected" - Nicholas Christakis, James Fowler "Change" - Damon Centola