Translation Rights TQE / Complex Networks. From the Genome to the Internet

We live in a world where no one is really far from anyone else

This book seeks to present the general public with the most recent discoveries within the emerging field of complex networks, which has gone beyond the scientific sphere and into that of linguistics, social sciences, and even technological development.

The past few years have seen a revolution within the study of complex systems based on a new cartography of complexity. New information about the interactions in the genome or internet have brought on the discovery of certain universal properties that underlie all complex networks, both natural and artificial. This new cartography allows us to understand the nature of the complex and its origins. We then discover genomes, ecosystems, or electrical networks that are tremendously fragile but also very plastic and efficient. Cancer and the internet alike appear to be connected like systems in which failure of a key node (a gene or a server) can unchain disaster. We find new information highways in the brain that were hidden from our vision. We live in a world where, surprising as it may seem, no one is really far from anyone else. The consequences of these discoveries are enormous and are quickly modifying our vision of the world.

Ricard Solé is Doctor of Physics by the Polytechnic University of Catalunya and is currently a professor at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, where he directs the Laboratory of Complex Systems. His investigations in this field cover from ecological theory to the study of social networks and of systems as complex as traffic and the internet. He is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, a Senior member of the Center for Astrobiology, associated to the NASA, and of the European Complex Systems Society. In 2003, his investigations in collaboration with Ramón Ferrer won the Ciutat de Barcelona Prize for Scientific Investigation for the work “Least effort and the origins of scalling in human language”, published in 2003 by the prestigious American magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His studies have been published in newspapers such as The New York Times, and he is the author or six recognized scientific essays.