Can you believe
that in this rising empire of social network, there could be just 6 linking
people between you and, say, Jennifer Lopez! Or maybe just 3 influences in a
few cases! Whoa, sounds terrific, doesn't it? Barack Obama could be just a few
emails away! *__*
We live in a really
small world they say, and it's becoming even smaller (virtually) due to all of
these social apps like Facebook, Twitter, Tinder, Pintrest, Instagram etc.
In the 1960s,
social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a small world experiment which
confirmed that two complete strangers could be connected in 6 degrees. Milgram
asked his participants to mail a letter through friends, friends of friends and
their friends of friends to a designated stranger in Massachusetts. It was found
that the participants who were successful, were able to do the task with a
chain of 6 or fewer connections of mutual contacts!
Colombia University
in 2003 did a "Small World Research Project", which was basically the
same experiment, but using the internet. They asked 60,000 random strangers to
create 24,000 e-mail chains and around 400 reached the people whom it was meant
to reach with an average of 5 to 7 'links' or connections between them!
A UK-based game company
called Mind
Candy is currently testing the theory by
distributing a picture of a Japanese man named Satoshi. The puzzle was
originally a part of Mind Candy's Perplex City, but it has since grown into its own project called Find
Satoshi.
There is also a movie/play
named "Six Degrees of
Separation" :)
It was also proposed (by
Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler) that due to the rise of social networking
platforms, there might be only an average of THREE degrees of influence between
two random people living in different halves of the planet! ^__^
To understand this theory in
a simple way watch:
(Thanks to Brenda Bitar
for the video)
So do you think this
is a fact or just nonsense? Try your own experiment and do revert back! Would
love a feedback! :D
