Philips researchers create social network for famous old dead blokes : Tech Digest

Status Updates: Charles Darwin is evolving. William Shakespeare has scored 86 points in Scrabulous with a made-up word. And Franz Liszt has joined the group People Who Always Have To Spell Their Names For Other People.

No, it's not the latest bunch of fake profiles on Facebook. Two computer scientists at Philips Research have been creating a sort-of social network of famous historical figures (besides those above, the likes of Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci and Ronald Reagan also feature). It involved analysing data on a selection of famous faces from the past, then grouping them in a social network of connections.

Apparently Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were the three 'top users'. The results are explained at length in a PDF called 'Creating a Dead Poets Society: Extracting a Social Network of Historical Persons from the Web' that you can browse via the link below. Someone should launch the idea commercially!

Philips Research PDF (via New Scientist)