It’s like a Hollywood political thriller come true: a handful of people lurking in the shadows, controlling the minds of millions. New research reveals that it’s possible for a few individuals to enslave an entire network, even if they aren’t highly connected themselves.
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Scientists have figured out how to identify the nodes — the points that link to other points in a network — that when tweaked can control the entire network. The research, published in the May 12 Nature, might lead to more secure power grids, tricks for controlling the metabolic processes of cells and marketing campaigns that spread like the plague.
If you wanted to nudge people on a social network into trying a new product or get a biochemical system to turn compound A into compound B, you could just push your product or compound into every entry point in the network. But that’s sort of a silly approach, says study coauthor Jean-Jacques Slotine of MIT. A much more efficient tactic would be to target just the nodes needed to get the desired outcome.