I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find that extremely comforting, that we're so close, but I also find it like Chinese water torture that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the connection. It's not just big names—it's anyone. A native in a rain forest, a Tierra del Fuegan, an Eskimo. I am bound—you are bound—to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. It's a profound thought: how Paul found us; how to find the man whose son he claims to be, or perhaps is, although I doubt it. How everyone is a new door, opening into other worlds.
So goes the famous monologue by Ouisa in John Guare's famous play "Six Degrees of Separation".
Six degrees of separation: I've heard these words being dropped many a times by a lot of people... enough reason for my interest to get triggered in search for information on it but enough laziness to put the task off for another day...
My ex-manager gave it to me as homework a long time back... Today, all of a sudden, I decided to actually go online & check up for info on it.
A 'degree of separation' is a measure of social distance between people. You are one degree away from everyone you know, two degrees away from everyone they know, and so on. The theory of
six degrees of separation proposes that, since we are all linked by chains of acquaintance, you are just six introductions away from any other person on the planet.
The story goes something like this:
In 1929, a Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy observed that technological advances in communications and travel were helping form friendship networks that could grow larger and span even greater distances. He felt that the modern world was 'shrinking' due to ever-increasing connectedness of human beings. He proposed this hypothesis in a short story called "Chains" advocating that the more people networking around the world, the less the social distance between people.
This idea is supposed to have inspired social networking sites such as Facebook & Orkut.
Michael Gurevich and Stanley Milgram researched upon Karinthy's theory. One weird story goes that the famous and largely controversial social psychologist, Milgram, conducted studies examining people's obedience to authority by testing how many would administer potentially lethal electric shocks to screaming victims. Shocked? Horrified? Well... if it's any consolation, the screaming victim was an actor in disguise. & the study showed abt 65% of the people willing to inflict this pain. :)
Another story is that he conducted an experiment using residents of America's midwest to send packages to several hundred people in Boston, giving them just a few details of their target such as name and profession. He made a startling discovery that on an average the package went through just a chain of five people before finding the recipient.
It's not so difficult to believe this theory. Imagine your cousin got a marriage proposal. It won't take long for anyone to do a background check on this person because one of them will know someone from their place, who would know their neighbour or relative, who would've gone to school with their father, & so on.
If I were to take an extreme case such as finding a person in say... a remote village in Kenya. What would I do? Hmmm... The first thing that comes to my mind is that a lot of Kenyans participate in the marathons in India. If I were to connect to them, chances are they know someone living or doing business in that area. I have 2 degrees already. :)
Researchers at Microsoft are said to have researched this theory using electronic conversations between about 180 million people. They now deem this theory right-nearly.
Now here's an interesting summary from me. I (1) know this guy from the UK (2) who has about 3 sisters, one of whom (3) has a friend (4) who acted in some of the Harry Potter movies and is acquainted with Daniel Radcliff (5). There! I'm not even 6 degrees away from the Harry Potter actor. Ha! :)
Legerdemain by
Greshma Dhanarajan is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
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