Nicholas Christakis: The hidden influence of social networks

http://www.ted.com We're all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits -- from happiness to obesity -- can spread from person to person, showing how your location in the network might impact your life in ways you don't even know.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Nicholas
• Christakis
• TEDTalks
• TED
• talks
• social
• networks
• Connected
• happiness
• obesity
• contagious
• epidemiology
• friends
• family

[roidroid]

SCREAM AT A CROWD FOR 18 MINUTES

[Gosead]

How fascinating and exciting.

These discoveries feel both deeply familiar and yet unknown and underexplored -- with the potential for understanding and creating new, better, more effective connections.

I love TED talks. :-)

[sor8an]

Genius

[GlobalEd33]

When individuals, political bodies, corporate entities, and society itself starts correcting & tending 2 the interpersonal network instead of being at the mercy of it, we'll finally tend to current affairs properly. Generally, we're insensitive to anything we can't link to personal benefit, societal values don't require more of us, so here we sit in the meantime, getting our asses handed to us. Were we to wise up & unite more, we wouldn't be in this mess staking our lives on political salvation

[sk8rdman]

14:50 Leave it to a nerd to use the molecular structure of minerals as an analogy for how the structure of social networking effects the properties of social groups.

DFTBA

[icosmini]

Is this a commercial for facebook? :)

[chrodriguez47]

Nooo, I am the 666th person to like this... Meh

[Belzedar]

I've watched this all the way through and I've just realised he's talking about conformity, a well-documented phenomenon. But because he doesn't participate in communities that do study conformity, the phenomenon is new to him and he's inventing a new model unnecessarily. Inventing terms such as 'confounding' and 'interconnections' cloud comprehension.