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Russell's disappointment in LinkedIn implies that the term 'social networking' makes little sense if we leave out the objects that mediate the ties between people. Think about the object as the reason why people affiliate with each specific other and not just anyone. For instance, if the object is a job, it will connect me to one set of people whereas a date will link me to a radically different group. This is common sense but unfortunately it's not included in the image of the network diagram that most people imagine when they hear the term 'social network.' The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people.

Imagine the stories we would tell, if we could construct video movies as easily and playfully as we now use spoken language. The Story Networks group explores storymaking principles and technologies that enhance cinematic story creation and sharing as activities of intelligent play and seeks to discover the empowering and framing constraints of designing these experiences for digital delivery over emerging networks in contemporary social contexts. Research complements, informs and is informed by research on Media Fabrics at the Interactive Cinema group at the MIT Media Lab.

'Flight Paths' seeks to explore what happens when lives collide - an airplane stowaway and the fictional suburban London housewife, quoted above. This project will tell their stories. 45 Through the fiction of these two lives, and the cross-connections and contradictions they represent, a larger story about the way we live today will emerge. The collision between the unknown young man, who will be both memorialised and brought back to life by the piece, and the London woman will provide the focus and force for a piece that will explore asylum, immigration, consumer culture, Islam and the West, as well as the seemingly mundane modern day reality of the supermarket car park itself. This young man's death/plummet will become a flight, a testament to both his extreme bravery and the tragic symbolism of his chosen route to the West. The initial goal of this project is to create a work of digital fiction, a 'networked book', created on and through the internet.

One minute, Rick Blackwell is sightseeing at St. Pancras in London; the next, he's caught up in a conspiracy that takes him far away from home. Rick needs to use all his skills to find out why a dying stranger seemed to know his name - and to stay alive. In this homage to The 39 Steps, Charles Cumming takes us on an adrenaline-fuelled adventure written and designed for Google Maps.