The news has been full of mentions this week of a report in the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine called “The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years.” The screenshot above is from an animation that accompanies the report. The animation audio mentions clusters of obesity that appear and points out that their density is lower at the periphery of the network. Perhaps the six degrees of separation diet will be the next big fad. A key truth the article demonstrates is that social networking is not some oddball result of the emergence of the Internet. Networking principles are deeply imbedded into the physical and psychological venues, as well as the virtual.

The news has been full of mentions this week of a report in the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine called “The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years.” The screenshot above is from an animation that accompanies the report. The animation audio mentions clusters of obesity that [...]