On April 23, 2008 Cornell University’s 2005-2008 Networks Theme Project capped the three-year teaching and research initiative with a lecture by team members including David Easley (Economics), Jon Kleinberg (Computer Science), Kathleen O’Connor (JGSM), Michael Macy (Sociology), and Dan Huttenlocher (Computer Science & JGSM) entitled “Getting Connected: Social Science in the Age of Networks.”

David Easley introduced the idea of networks by comparing something as easy to understand as a map of the London Underground with station hubs and connecting train lines, to esoteric systems based on ideas and beliefs such as as the intertwined and often hard to detect connections among groups of people where a person is a node, and the edges between one individual and another are different types of relationships. Though the internet has made the study of the spread of networks that convey disease, rumor, and history easier because digital traces can now be tracked and measured, interpretation is still the key to making sense of their significance for people and policy-makers. As Michael Macy noted, “You can interview friends, but you cannot interview a friendship.”

The initiative itself was an interesting social network that encouraged collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. 280 students from 33 majors participated in two conferences: Search and Diffusion on Social Networks Workshop and the Cornell Microsoft International Symposium on Self-Organizing Online Communities, attended lectures, took part in reading groups and made over 600 blog posts in NSDL’s Expert Voices. Jon Kleinberg observed that undergraduate students were able to take part in “Building the science behind the world they inhabit.” Students studied situations like how a network of apartment roommates functions, and how social network theories applied to their own day-to-day experiences on line and in real life.