These two papers are pretty similar and are written by the same author, W. Brian Arthur: Positive Feedbacks in the Economy,
Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-In Historical Events. Both papers are from the late ’80s, and show that the idea of Network Effects dates back, although in these paperes it is discussed in terms of […]

Wikipedia Synopsis of “Guns, Germs and Steel” 
 In his award-winning book, “Guns, Germs and Steel”, author Jared Diamond attempts to understand and explain why it seems certain cultures throughout the world (and throughout history) have dominated others with their culture and wealth. In his own words, why some have more and others have less. Diamond claims […]

http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
Clay’s writings discuss the concept of a “critical mass” that Schelling discusses in Micromotives and Macrobehavior. The idea is that there is some threshold - be it percentage of membership, number of members actively attending, or so forth - beyond which a group is guaranteed to succeed, and below which a group is guaranteed […]

The Article
Carey, Benedict. “When Death is on the Docket, Moral Compass Wavers.” The New York Times. 7 Feb 2006. 15 April 2007. <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/07/health/psychology/07exec.html?pagewante…>.

“It’s something we do whether we’re for it or against it, and we try to make the process as humane as possible,” says Burl Caine chief executioner at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, “The […]

“The Economics of Programming Languages”
“Programming Language Popularity”
Author David Welton analyzes the important and subtle economic characteristics of programming languages in the two articles above. He states that, though languages can be very useful regardless of the number of people using them, most of them gain strength through a large reinforcing network of users. Also, his […]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/12/news/networks.php

In Europe, some companies are taking an innovative approach to integrate a physical social network and an online physics network. These companies are helping individuals find other people they share something in common with. For instance, the Xing social network has become a popular tool for European businessmen by providing details of “interests, experience […]

In 2003, Wal-mart using its economic prowess mandated that its top 100 suppliers begin using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags by 2005.  This new technology allows for monitoring inventory remotely, electronically, and automatically.  Its application ranges from tracking how many items of a particular product is on the shelf in a store to how many […]

http://chaos1.la.asu.edu/~yclai/papers/PRE_02_ML_3.pdf
 
            In most networks, each single node has a minimal effect on the entire network as a whole. The removal of single nodes generally does not endanger the network as a whole. An example of this is the Internet: if a few sites are removed, the entire Internet still stays as a whole and would […]

http://www.physorg.com/news95074548.html
According to some research, the wealth of the population follows two separate distributions. Scientists from Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and Institute of Mathematical Sciences have analyzed different sets of data that shows that the poorer majority of the population follows the Gibbs/log-normal distribution, while the wealthiest follow a power law distribution. The power law […]

http://arxiv.org/ftp/cond-mat/papers/0306/0306031.pdf
During the Medieval Inquisition, the Roman Catholic Church regarded heresy as a disease. This paper talks about heresy in 13th and 14th century France.
According to this paper, the Catholic Church noticed how the spread of heresy was like a disease spreading throughout Christendom. Leaders of the church likened heresy to rotting food, disease among livestock […]