Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person he or she knows and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people he or she knows, then everyone is an average of six “steps” away from each person on Earth.

A Facebook platform application named “Six Degrees” has been developed by Karl Bunyan (London network), which calculates the degrees of separation between different people. As of 2:00 pm GMT on January 8, 2008, it had 11,784,554 people in its database. The average separation for all users of the application is 6.38 degrees, whereas the maximum degree of separation is 14. The application has a “Search for Connections” window to input any name of a Facebook user, to which it then shows the chain of connections.

The earliest articulation of six degrees of separation was by Italian radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi in his Nobel Prize speech in 1909. Marconi attempted to compute how many radio relay stations would be required to cover the globe, and came up with an average of 5.83 based on his transmission experiments at Poldho on the coast of Cornwall. His Nobel Lecture stated that his two assistants on the S.S. Philadelphia were able to receive ‘readable’ messages up to 1551 miles and test letters up to 2099 miles: transmission mileages significant to four digits. Marconi laid out a grid of squares, each with a transmitter in the center, covering the inhabited area of the Earth (about 15% of the surface at that time). Coverage of this area would require 5.83 transmission stations (rounded to six, since transmitters only come in whole units) each with a 1551 mile broadcast radius.

Several studies such as Milgram’s small world experiment, have been conducted to empirically measure this connectedness. While the exact number of links between people differs depending on the population measured, it is generally found to be relatively small. Hence, six degree of separation is somewhat synonymous with the idea of the “small world” phenomenon. Detractors argue that Milgram’s experiment did not demonstrate such a link, and the “six degrees” claim has been decried as an “academic urban myth”.

In 2001, Duncan Watts, a professor at Columbia University, attempted to recreate Milgram’s experiment on the internet, using an e-mail message as the “package” that needed to be delivered, with 48,000 senders and 19 targets (in 157 countries). Watts found that the average (though not maximum) number of intermediaries was around six. This finding is surprising, given the worldwide nature of the Internet.

It has been suggested by some commentators that interlocking networks of computer mediated lateral communication could diffuse single messages to all interested users worldwide as per the 6 degrees of separation principle via Information Routing Groups, which are networks specifically designed to exploit this principle and lateral diffusion.

SixDegrees.org

On January 18, 2007, Kevin Bacon launched SixDegrees.org, a web site that builds on the popularity of the “small world phenomenon” to create a charitable social network and inspire giving to charities online. Bacon started the network with celebrities who are highlighting their favorite charities – including Kyra Sedgwick (Natural Resources Defense Council), Nicole Kidman (UNIFEM), Ashley Judd (YouthAIDS), Bradley Whitford and Jane Kaczmarek (Clothes off Our Back), Dana Delany (Scleroderma Research Foundation), Robert Duvall (Pro Mujer), Rosie O’Donnell (Rosie’s For All Kids Foundation), and Jessica Simpson (Operation Smile) – and he encouraged everyone to be celebrities for their own causes by joining the Six Degrees movement.

Bacon created SixDegrees.org in partnership with the nonprofit Network for Good, AOL, and Entertainment Weekly. Through SixDegrees.org, which builds on Network for Good’s giving system for donating to more than one million charities online and AOL’s AIM Pages social networking service, people can learn about and support the charities of celebrities or fundraise for their own favorite causes with their own friends and families.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 11:33 am and is filed under Sachi, society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.