Geek's Talk VIII: Birds of a feather flock together

Salam and good day.

Birds of a feather flock together @ birds of the same feather; flock together literally means "means that people who are similar to each other often spend time together ". Throughout the emergence of so called "digital" civilization cradle, humans are finding new ways to stay connected, either through any other means of various communication channels. Internet makes this idea accessible. Name it, Blog, Facebook, Wordpress, and so forth. Some people probably make it available to public (like this silly blog) or pretty exclusive to a certain walk of life. One way to another, people who are connected to this (or anything) may have something in common. Either it is might be mutual interest, gossiping group, or "same wavelength" thing.

Actually we have used this social network metaphor throughout our lifetime to connote complex sets of relationships between members/friends of social systems at all scales, from intimate (hmmmm!)l to something public ("makcik joyah & kiah" group.... heh..heh..heh) - humans are good in that. (social species in the animal kingdom have something in common) as well - but i wonder, do they, i mean the "makcik joyah & kiah" part ;-)). In computer science, the study of how human communicates, socializing and sharing common thought is grouped under the social networks analysis. It is a melting pot between cross-disciplinary works, namely social psychology, mathematical modelling, economics and anthropology (and many more). Well, for some geek's fun, I did visualize my Facebook social network; (sorry these images are not that clear)

My social network among UUM's colleagues and friends

The social network within my Kamillian's friends (my former school)

The social network of my Spanish friends

Denser those spots are, it means there are many people within that particular group. ~ literally, you have many friends, at least, virtually there. ;-) So, what this fancy stuff has something to do with me. (ohhh crap, i am a geek ......). One of my research foci is trying to discern this hidden and special social human-to-human interaction, in order to devise a better social-support communication channel between human and our therapeutic robot. Let say, to provide a "good" support, this type of robot should be able to digitally "comprehend" how each individual reacts and communicates within his/her social support network. The preliminary experimental result shows a positive relationship between a recovered individual from depression and a good social support network. Oh, no worries, this cute robot will not ashtray into your details, or try to tackle your girlfriend ;-). But I will! heh...heh...heh..heh ;-) * just kidding .... So folks, birds of a feather truly flock together

Pakcik said: Oh, it will be fun to have a secret society to reveal the hidden and long-lost secret of anything (ni gara2 baca novel Dan Brown ni). So, should we have one? ...... heh....heh....heh
* Rule of thumb: you may understand your friends through their friends. pretty simple right? But do not be too judgmental - it is not healthy!"