Throwback Thursday: Six Degrees of Separation Revisited

Most of us have heard of the expression six degrees of separation. Wikipedia describes it this way:

Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the "Human Web") refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularized in a play written by John Guare.

Funny thing is when I do a quick search on this story, WhatIs.com just told me the notion originated with Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains." Did Guare steal the idea from Karinthy without attribution?

I remember reading an article about Kevin Bacon being the most connected person in Hollywood, with all these charts and lines of connection to other actors and directors of disparate genres of films and maybe Broadway connections and who knows. The article explained how they used computers and Compiled all the Hollywood stars into a database to get a composite picture from which they could deduce conclusions.

As it turns out, this whole thing became a fad the resulted in the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game. If you really wanted to get into it, there's even a website now called The Oracle of Bacon where you can type in the name of any actor or actress and learn how many degrees away they are. Not only that, you can download the Oracle of Bacon app and have this invaluable info at your fingertips day or night. 

About seven years ago, with the advent of Web 2.0 and Social Networks, I began to wonder if six degrees of separation may have been reduced to five or four, or even three. Through Twitter, during Thanksgiving 2008, we were two or three degrees of separation from terrorists firing assault weapons in the Mumbai financial district.

I do not know how this (Six Degrees) plays out in the rest of the world, but for sure I would think that in this country we are three or four degrees of separation from anyone, at most. You are reading this, wherever you are. The convenience store clerk is two degrees from me. Her boy friend, that kid with the racy T-shirt and a smudge of chocolate on his chin, is but three steps away. And we all know how connected he is.

Many people have tried to verify this theory to see if it holds up. In August 2008 Microsoft claimed that after studying billions of electronic messages, they verified that any two strangers in the world were 6.6 introductions away from one another. According to their science you are less than seven steps away from Bob Dylan, Richard Branson, John Cleese and the Dalai Lama, though if you Twitter you can actually be one step away from the latter three, if you follow them... and two steps away if you follow me.

If we accept Microsoft's 2008 number of 6.6 as a benchmark, we can do another measurement in 2018 to see if people are getting closer as the world's population expands, or are we actually drifting further away from one another? I suspect that some people are getting burned out on all this connectivity, whereas others get juiced by the social engagement. What about you?

Meantime, life goes on... Dig it.

Will Dylan Help You Find Direction Home?

How would you like to be together through life with Bob Dylan? I mean, when you’re driving in your car and you don’t know which way to go, you can turn on the GPS and, hey, you’ve got company. Yes, to drive beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, sillouhetted by the sea... heading on out to Highway 61, or wherever.

Oh where have you been driving my blue-eyed son?
Oh where have you been driving my darling young one?

Dylan created a stir the other night by mentioning on his BBC radio show that he's been in discussions with not one, but two sat nav companies as a candidate to be The Voice that leads you home.

The idea isn’t so novel when you discover that other celebs have already been actively directing peoples' drives, from John Cleese and Mr. T to a Sean Connery knock-off and the real Homer Simpson. (I don’t think I want to hear a “Doh!” every time I make a wrong turn though.)

My guess is that once the novelty wears off you won’t care too much who’s chattin’ at you as long as the directions are accurate. Whenever we stopped to ask for directions in Mexico they almost always said the same thing: “Todo derecho” which literally means, “All right” but we took to mean, “Just keep going straight ahead” because that’s where they were always pointing. Which meant the directions were usually useless.

The Dylan comments seem to have created quite a buzz, though. Was it a trial balloon to see how much interest there would be in the idea? Rumor has it that six other rock stars made similar comments on the air this past two months and not one story appeared in print afterwards, proof that Dylan’s still got pull and a lot of others are still just wannabes.

Journalists are having fun with the story though. I liked this one from the London Telegraph with the subhead “For anyone lost on their way to Maggie’s Farm, this might be just the thing.”

Then there's the guy in California, Jonathan Mann, who already wrote and YouTubed a "Sneak Preview" spoof version of what the new Dylan GPS system will sound like.

Actually, this guy Mann seems pretty clever. What Julie Powell did with a year's worth of Julia Child recipes, he's attempting to do with a year's worth of songs... writing one each day, turning it into a music video and airing it on YouTube. To get exposure he's been playing off the news, and is evidently getting a following.

Side street: Several years ago when podcasting first came into its own, a woman from the Dakotas podcast a song which she recorded each day and ultimately, by month's end obtained a $900,000 recording contract from Sony. I guess when you live in the middle of nowhere, you get exposure any way you can.

Back to the main road: Dylan in the news always becomes an occasion for me to share one or more of my Dylan paintings. The two pictures on this page were taken earlier thi month using the green sillouhette background which which was a foreground for my original Dylan profile. Or vice versa.

Heading down another side street... if you could have anyone in the world giving you directions on your GPS, who would it be? I can picture my brother choosing Cary Grant. He's smooth. But there are plenty of other pretty distinctive voices out there. Jimmy Stewart might be fun. Paul McCartney. How about Marlene Dietrich? "Dahling, I believe you just missed your turn."

Disclaimer: The comment about six other rock stars was strictly fiction.

Is Six Now Three?

Most of us have heard of the expression six degrees of separation. Wikipedia describes it this way:

Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the "Human Web") refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularized in a play written by John Guare.

Funny thing is when do a quick search on this story, WhatIs.com just told me the notion originated with Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains." Did Guare steal the idea from Karinthy without attribution?

I remember reading an article about Kevin Bacon being the most connected person in Hollywood, with all these charts and lines of connection to other actors and directors of disparate genres of films and maybe Broadway connections and who knows. I believe they used computers and plugged in all the Hollywood stars to get a composite picture from which they could deduce conclusions.

With the advent of Web 2.0 and Social Networks I have begun to wonder if six degrees of separation has been reduced to five or four, or even three? Through Twitter last November we were two or three degrees of separation from terrorists firing assault weapons in the Mumbai financial district, as it happened.

I do not know how this plays out in the rest of the world, but for sure I would think that in this country we are three or four degrees of separation from anyone, at most. You are reading this, wherever you are. The convenience store clerk is two degrees from me. Her boy friend, that kid with the racy T-shirt and a smudge of chocolate on his chin, is but three steps away. And we all know how connected he is.

Many people have tried to verify this theory to see if it holds up. In August 2008 Microsoft claims that after studying billions of electronic messages, they verified that any two strangers in the world are 6.6 introductions away from one another. According to their science you are less than seven steps away from Bob Dylan, Richard Branson, John Cleese and the Dalai Lama, thogh if you Twitter you can actually be one step away from the latter three... if you follow them... and two steps away if you follow me.

If we take the 2008 number of 6.6 as a benchmark, we'll see what Microsoft tells us about 6 degrees of separation in 2015. Will we be getting closer as the world population expands, or are we actually drifting farther away from one another?

The New Social Media: It Never Ceases To Amaze

This past year I picked up a book about blogging in which the author admitted upfront that in 2004 he thought MySpace and social media was going to be a passing fad. In three years MySpace was bigger than Mexico in terms of residents. And since late last summer FaceBook now has grown from 100 to 200 million... twice as big as Mexico.

My first foray into blogging was with MySpace maybe five years ago. I didn't get much out of it or understand it or devote any time to figuring out what it was about. Some guy named Tom became my friend, possibly for the purpose of guiding me into what MySpace could do. But mostly there were risque young vultures asking to be my friend only to be kicked out of the MySpace community shortly thereafter.

My daughter was on FaceBook around this time, but I avoided going there because I didn't want to appear to be a snoopy parent.

Plaxo, LinkedIn and other business networks began cropping up, and finally, I got some books and did some research so I could determine where to establish my own blogland real estate. The Google solution is Blogger. I like the price, too. It's free. It was also relatively easy. I hung up my shingle, Ennyman's Territory. Even the ESPN Fantasy game sites are social network communities. You can create your profile, fill in details, interact with others.

At some point in time last year the Twitter phenomenon blipped across my radar. By now, it is on a lot of people's radar. "Should I, or shouldn't I?" people are asking.

After all is said and done, here are a few things I like and don't like about the blogs and social media.

Likes
You can discover and meet interesting people whom you would have never come across in any other way probably, at least not in this lifetime.
It can be a form of cheap entertainment as millions of people share their most interesting thoughts, ideas, links of the day, or favorite quotes, or whatever.
I enjoy being part of something new, curious to see where it all will go.

Dislikes
A lot of these sites can be big time consumers as people tag and interact and play games.
I don't like having to log in to all the different networks in order to interact with people. I would rather do most of it by email me.
Because they are all Internet based, when you don't have Internet access, you're out.
Also, since other people are running the show, they can change things in how they're set up and you generally have no say.

Twitter
Of all the variations of social media, besides maintaining my personal blog, I like Twitter best. It is fast, easy, and influential. It looks to me like an especially great tool for journalists and net-related professions. You have to participate to get a sense of its potential. I intuitively felt it to be a very powerful tool early on.

Yesterday I came across an interesting blog article 10 Most Extraordinary Twitter Updates from this past year. Item 1 was a marriage proposal via Twitter. Interesting, but I can imagine someone doing that. Johnny Cash asked June Carter on stage, in front of an audience.

Item 2 was really unbelievable. Actually, it made me think of The Truman Show. Corey Menscher created a device and a Twitter account, kickbee, which sent out tweets anytime the infant in his wife's womb kicked his mom. Tyler, born on January 19th, 2009, now “tweets” from his new account, minimensch.

Many of us heard that news of the Mumbai terrorist attack broke first on Twitter. There have been other big stories in which Twitterers were first to break the news as well including a Continental Airlines crash in Denver and an earthquake that rocked China.

Obama used Twitter to his advantage during last year's campaign. Lots of other high profile persons are using Twitter. I've seen John Cleese and Richard Branson there. You can find Demi Moore and Twitteraholic Guy Kawasaki. My guess is that the Apostle Paul would have been tweeting from that Roman jail cell if he'd had access, but I doubt that Twitter was what Jesus had in mind when he told His disciples to "Follow Me," ...though this line of inquiry does raise the question WWJT? What would Jesus tweet?

Himalaya

We all know the Himalayas. Or rather, we pretty much all know that they are the highest mountains in the world, somewhat forbidding and full of mystery.

I just finished reading (again, listening to) the unabridged account of Michael Palin’s book Himalaya, read by the author. Palin is the familiar face from the BBC’s Monty Python comedy troop, one of my favorite characters in whatever skit you find him in. His “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” sketch is always a gut splitter, but in almost anything where he is teamed with John Cleese you can be sure it’s going to be funny.

Himalaya, however, is a serious book, essentially an ongoing chronicle of Palin’s travels while filming his travel show for the BBC. This adventure covered 3,000 miles and took six months to complete, a little much for a four day weekend. Beginning at the Kuyber Pass at the Afghanistan border, Palin takes in everything, sharing it with his viewers and readers. High altitude polo in Pakistan, penetrating dialogue with the exiled Dalai Lama, and a whole range of mountain top experiences are shared with enthusiasm. The wide variety of cultures, religions, peoples and political expressions are highly informative.

Palin’s wit is with him throughout, and a keen eye for details that make the journey memorable for those of us who weren’t able to join him. On some occasions there were parties and social encounters where the most remote peoples were familiar with Palin from his Monty Python days, and a few times he even sang for them The Lumberjack Song. The book is an entertaining and informative experience by a highly entertaining writer.

If you're interested in this part of the world, I also recommend the Brad Pitt film Seven Years in Tibet, the true story of Heinrich Harrer, an Australian mountain climber who became friends with the Dalai Lama. I've watched it several times, never without being moved. Pitt is superb, the cinematography spectacular, the story uplifting, and yes, the film is a masterpiece.

But the backdrop for all, whether Michael Palin's adventure or the Hollywood re-creation of a slice of history, is a mountainous region of the world known wondrously as the Himalayas. In whatever form you wish to take it in, please do.