The six degrees of separation

Web Nebula or cloud 2004

Is a theory that states that every person in the world is somehow connected to each other. In detail it refers to the idea that every person is at six steps away separated to each person on earth. Therefore you need at least 5 persons to complete the sequence.

The oldest writes about the human interconnections in probably the Bible, stating that somehow every human being is connected to each other like brothers and sisters of the same family.

Back in 1929, the Hungarian author, Frigyes Karinthy wrote some volumes about networks and human connections. He came up with the idea of a smaller world due to its connectivity between human beings.

Later in the Sixties, other tried to prove that every human being is connected to each other indirectly, called the small world experiment. All thou early attempts have been made Milligram’s was worth to be mentioned.

Milgram’s study results showed that people in the United States seemed to be connected by approximately three friendship links, on average, without speculating on global linkages; he never actually used the phrase “six degrees of separation”. Since the Psychology Today article gave the experiments wide publicity, Milgram and earlier researches all had been incorrectly attributed as the origin of the notion of “six degrees”; the most likely popularized of the phrase “six degrees of separation” is John Guare, who attributed the value “six” to Marconi ( the radio inventor).

DIGITAL ERA

In 2001, Duncan Watts , a professor at Columbia University, recreated Milgram’s experiment by sending an email called “the package” that needed to be delivered around the world. Duncan came to the average of 6 as the number of intermediates.

In 2007 another test has been performed on Microsoft Messenger analyzing more than 240 millions people conversations. Here the average has been found of 6.6 (recalling it the 7 degree  of separation).

The actor Kevin Bacon has invented a game based on this theory: “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon” The concept is to link any actor to Kevin through six connections. Because Kevin has state that he has played with every actor in the history of Hollywood directly or indirectly !

Hollywood actor Kevin Bacon

Today with the power behind online social networks, we can assist for the first time in history the interconnection between human beings. All thou we know that a great piece of the planet does not have access to internet and not every one chooses the same social network to register to, we can have an idea of the power of interconnections.

Facebook, Myspace, Bebo and Netlog are the biggest examples of human interconnections.  All social networks have combined together more than 500 million people registered ! These Social networking platforms shows the behaviour of human people towards common goals or interests. Both Facebook and Myspace communities with common interests and groups, working together to achieves specific goals, whether we are speaking about music, charity or business !

Linkedin provides you to see till the third degree of separation. I myself am connected on the first degree to 1,500 people around the world, but on the third degree am connected with more than 12 million !

Network statistics on Linkedin