CONCLUSION
Network science originated in the social sciences and in mathematical graph theory in the eighteenth century, with major new contributions made since the mid-twentieth century. It has developed a unique language, concepts and metrics to represent and measure networks.
These tools have made it possible to analyze the topology of the Internet in novel ways. Because it allows the modeling of the structure and connectedness among the nodes in a network, network science offers a powerful conceptual and methodological framework to study the Internet and its effects on economic and social outcomes. Social scientists, computer scientists, and physicists have made important contributions to this eminently interdisciplinary field. Much of the theoretical and empirical work is in an early stage with significant ongoing innovations. The integration of social science theory, game theory and computational methods with the availability of large granular datasets promises fruitful insights. Moreover, the cross-fertilization of economic approaches with models from communications holds considerable potential. Although network science has facilitated important insights and innovations, much work remains to be done. Further impulses may come from the exchanges between network science, Internet science, web science and Internet studies. The overlaps and synergies between network science and complexity theory are fertile ground for theoretical and empirical innovation. At the same time, network science has some weaknesses. The focus on network structures comes, to a certain extent, at the expense of addressing important features of social systems, such as differences in the power attributable to agents, the specific social relations embedded in laws and norms, and the political economy of Internet governance and policy. These are not fundamental weaknesses, though, as network science, in principle, should be able to accommodate such concerns in richer models.NOTE
1. See http://www.caida.org/tools/visualization/walrus/, accessed 15 December 2015.
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