Using the "people-who-bought-this-are interested-in-that" feature of amazon.com, the Amazing Baconizer takes you through the steps of separation from any one item (book, CD or movie) on amazon.com to another. You can set up the start and end yourself, or you can do random walks. Some are hysterically funny, others uncover some interesting gems on the path from one personal favorite to another, apparently totally unrelated, personal favorite.
Beyond the simple fun of a "six degrees of separation game," the Baconizer actually has some fairly neat implications for social networks -- including why smokers are critical to successfully navigating bureaucracies. But enough of theory, it's his centrality charts that are quite entertaining.
Each month there's a chart for the top "central" products that emerge from the spaghetti of amazon.com's product links. That's the products that show up most often at the inflection point of Bacon-paths. Not necessarily bestsellers. But stuff that wind up being at the center of networks of relations, and that people are obviously buying. Here's the site's proprietor, Eric Promislow, on what emerges from his centrality charts.
The Dinner Party ListHey, what's not to like!
When I saw the first month's central list, I noticed how eclectic the list was, and how most of the books -- and they were all books in the top 100 -- looked like interesting reads. The top-ten central books for December, 2003, cover topics ranging from genocide, histories of rock music, Hollywood and television, corporate pollution, violence in society, and the tobacco issue. A few textbooks often show up in the top 25, but college students have to buy all kinds of books, including textbooks.
To me, much of the top 100 items in the central list appear like the sort of books you'd find someone with a liberal arts background would keep reading after college. ... Some people might look at the list and think, "PBS in print". Everything's there except the funding drives.
I ended up calling this list The Dinner Party list because I pictured being at a dinner party where people had been reading these items, and discussing them, as opposed to the items in the best-seller section. Of course I realize for the most part this is just a romanticization of what a dinner party could be. The most realistic depiction of a dinner party on film I've ever seen was in Adaptation, where the participants, all academics and New Yorker writers, were as gossipy and malicious as you'll find anywhere. But I'm sticking with the name.
And BTW, the number of overall links drops during December, 2003. Promislow speculates "that people's purchases actually narrow during the holiday season." Have to watch what happens this December.
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