Events

Andrew Lih recounts colorful behind-the-scenes stories of how obsessive map editors, automated software robots, and warring factions have come to shape a complex online community of knowledge gatherers.

Economist John Rutledge discusses nonequilibrium thermodynamics, network failures and the information economy, and the role played by government officials and media in the neuroscience of fear, to demonstrate how the current global economic crisis is a network failure of the worldwide information system.

Authors Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox give first-hand accounts of the burgeoning power of the netroots to determine the outcome of political contests, with a focus on the role of citizen activists in Barack Obama's election, Jim Webb's 2006 Senate victory, and the fall of Tom DeLay.