Networking Perspective

Abstract

Modern society connects humanity in more ways than at any time in world history using technologies that could not previously be imagined. Two millennia ago in the war between the Greeks and Persians all messages were hand carried by runners. Phidippides was tasked with running the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to tell of the victory of the Greeks over the Persians on the Marathon Plains and to warn of the approaching Persian ships. He is reported to have covered the distance in 3 h and died from exhaustion shortly after delivering his message. This heroic image, whether historical fact or not, is celebrated today in the yearly running of marathons at many locations across the globe. However as society in general and warfare in particular became more sophisticated so did the methods of communication. One replacement for the runner was the carrier pigeon (Fig. 1.1). Such pigeons were used extensively in war as late as the two World Wars of the previous century and particularly in the invasion of Normandy in order to avoid messages being intercepted by the Germans. The pigeon probably bested the runner’s time by less than a factor of ten along paths where they could actually compete. However the non-biological technologies of telegraph and telephone where land lines existed and radio where they did not could cover the runner’s distance in no time at all. But communication networks are only one of the myriad of ways people are connected in today’s society.

One important idea is that science is a means whereby learning is achieved, not by mere theoretical speculation on the one hand, nor by the undirected accumulation of practical facts on the other, but rather by a motivated iteration between theory and practice…. George E. P. Box