WE are the World :: Six Degrees of Separation
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As the world comes together for the 2008 Summer Olympics on 8/8/08, I am reminded of the new study reported just about a week ago regarding the phenomena referred as six degrees of separation. The finding reveals it is a very small world after all.
There are any number of ways to think about this. What do you think is the distance between you and any other random person on the planet? What are the odds we, as individuals, are connected to another worlds apart? Apparently, the odds are better than you think.
Microsoft did a study using text messages (over 30 billion) and through some, what I could only imagine would be some crazy mathematics, found the link between you and anyone else would be no more than seven people! The relevance of this study is that it was the most comprehensive of any ever done using far more advanced technology and the first to be applied world-wide.
There is an interconnectedness in the world.
Eric Horvitz, of Microsoft, was quoted in the Washington post saying,
To me, it was pretty shocking. What we’re seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity. People have had this suspicion that we are really close. But we are showing on a very large scale that this idea goes beyond folklore.
As we watch the world play together in this Olympiad, I sense the reality that we are truly related. We are much closer than we think. The world is a big family. I tend to see it as another hint pointing toward a grand Creator.
August 8th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
I’m not sure if it’s an urban legend or not, but I rember hearing about was some kind of email experiment where they picked two random people…let’s say Phoenix Phil and Billy Bob in Podunk, Arkansas. You (Phoenix Phil) don’t know this guy from Adam, but you email someone who you think might. So you email your uncle Joe in Louisiana. Joe emails his army buddy in Little Rock, and so on and they say they were able to connect random person A to random person B within six people on average.
Also, for the record…I am ONE degree of Kevin Bacon. I was at a conference wtih a lady who met him. So now you, knoiwng me, can say you are TWO degrees of Kevin Bacon!! Now I KNOW that made your day
August 8th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Looking back on my post…correct me if I’m wrong, but I THINK I’m one degree of Kevin Bacon…if I had actually met him would’t I be zero degrees? (Unless zero degrees means I AM Kevin Bacon?) If not, then I guess I’m two degrees and you’re three..but who’s counting?
August 9th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Lisa — It is very easy and I am surprised you would be confused about this. The confusion comes in of being zero degrees because that would be relative to WHERE you met him, if you met him. Let me simplify this with a If/then — IF you met him in Minnisoooooohta, THEN it would be ZERO degrees. Maybe even BELOW zero.
I did a **google** search about it and there have been quite a number of experiments. I wonder if knowing specific info on the “unknown” other person skews anything. For example, if I knew that the person I was “connecting” with was in china, I would have a head start as I know someone living there. (so do you — Doug.)
I think what was so impressive about the Microsoft study, is it analyzed tremendous amount of information using text messages and the analysis did indeed show that mathematically or maybe statistically (remember, I was an English major with very little math
) we are just under 7 people away from each other.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am
KEVIN BACON!!! I love that!
It is a freakishly small world.
With regard to physical relation, many of your distant cousins are walking around right in front of you! I remember attending a family reunion of just one branch of one of my 4 grandparents. Well, all these cousins that I have never seen before, came out of the woodwork, some possessing the strong features that often persist down the family line. I thought, if I had run into this person in a store, even seeing that they resembled me in a fashion, I would not assume they were “related”.
I have cousins/relatives (that I know of, though most I personally do not know) in the USA, England, Ireland, Spain, Australia, Cuba, Panama, probably Italy and Scotland. These are just the ones I have an inkling about, so there are probably many in areas I know nothing of.