The Power of Networks
by Graeme
The New Scientist magazine of 29 Jan 2005, Feedback section, carried the following story:
NASA publishes an Astronomy Picture of the Day, and Mark Fletcher noticed that the one it released for 7 December 2004 featured a view out to sea from the Australian coast. Why is that astronomical, he wondered.
But as those who visit http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041207.html can see, a dark diagonal line crosses the photo, apparently starting in the clouds at the top left and ending in a flash near a lamp post at the bottom right – and no one knew what had made it.
An impressive exercise in collaborative deduction ensued, in which only a few of the 2072 messages posted over the following month suggested UFOs, or made sarcastic counter-claims of “mass hysteria”. The near-straightness of the line led many to the astute thought that whatever it was moved very, very fast.
More delving ensued. Someone performed a Fourier analysis to extract the frequencies of barely perceptible wiggles in the line. In a moment of inspiration, someone else tore themselves from their computer to perform an actual experiment. By gluing a dead bee to the rim of a bicycle wheel and photographing it as it spun, the experimenter succeeded in replicating the slight wigglicity of the line.
Thus a consensus was reached: the line was formed by a bug flying just in front of the lens – possibly the most discussed bug in history.
Isn’t science wonderful?
THIS IS A FANTASTIC EXAMPLE of the power of networking, and how technology and the information networks we have created so successfully over the past few decades are now being leveraged in the form of connections and interactions. Imagine harnessing this type of interactive power, all for free, in the network that is your customers? or your staff?
What are you doing to create, nurture, and harness your latent connections and networks?
Related posts:
- Social Networks and how we communicate On Friday 2 October 2009, I was interviewed by Rueben...
- Power of Mobile Money In the early 1990’s I started work for one of...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Recent Comments