Bursts: The Hidden Patterns Behind Everything We Do, from Your E-mail to Bloody Crusades [Paperback]

A revolutionary new theory showing how we can predict human behavior-from a radical genius and bestselling author

Can we scientifically predict our future? Scientists and pseudo scientists have been pursuing this mystery for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. But now, astonishing new research is revealing patterns in human behavior previously thought to be purely random. Precise, orderly, predictable patterns...

In this captivating exploration into the patterns of human behavior, Albert-László Barabási unveils a groundbreaking theory that challenges the notion of randomness. Barabási, a world-renowned expert in the science of networks, delves into the intricacies of our digital world, revealing the extraordinary insights hidden within vast amounts of data. Through the analysis of time-stamped texts, voicemails, and internet searches, Barabasi unravels the precise, predictable bursts of human activity that shape our lives. In Linked, Barabasi showed us how complex networks unfold in space. In Bursts, he shows us how they unfold in time. Your life may look random to you, but everything from your visits to a web page to your visits to the doctor are predictable, and happen in bursts.
-Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody

Barabasi is one of the few people in the world who understand the deep structure of empirical reality.
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan

Barabßsi brings a physicist's penetrating eye to a sweeping range of human activities, from migration to web browsing, from wars to billionaires, from illnesses to letter writing, from the Department of Homeland Security to the Conclave of Cardinals. Barabßsi shows how a pattern of bursts appears in what lƒ"