Simon’s Blog

In a post entitled, “How to avoid sounding like an monkey” (sic), Dave Winer explains that anyone who uses terms from a branch of mathematics called, Graph Theory, in the context of social networking sounds like an “idiot”. Err…. what?

Graph theory is a well-established field, having been around for more than two hundred years. The first ideas about network graphs were actually published in 1736 by the fabulous mathematician, Leonhard Euler. So, why the anti-intellectualism from Dave? There is absolutely nothing wrong with people discussing graph theory in the context of social networks; and certainly the very act of doing so does not make people “sound like idiots”, as Dave would have it. Quite the opposite, in fact. I would assert that smart people would be able to see substantial potential value in applying graph theoretic techniques to social networking, particularly in the area of search.

Like Dave, I would encourage people to stand up for their rights to understand technology. Unlike Dave, however, I’d encourage people to do that through being willing learning about new things, not by trying to close down discussions in areas they don’t understand.