social network[]
Social networking 124 people
A human being living 95 years is worth 3 billions seconds or 35000 days ; people have 5000 directs contacts on average during his life.
A brain can feel emotions with a small tribe or community called 'social network'. People have stable relationships with a maximal of 150 persons, the average is 124.
6 degrees of separation[]
In the 1960s and 70s, Stanley Milgram tried "small world experiments". These experiments involved sending folders or letters from a group of people in one part of the country to a specific person whom they did not know in another part of the country. The participants were told to get the material to someone who might know someone that would know the individual to whom the material was to be delivered. So this process is a chain of connections linking the people together.
It was found that the letters or folders that eventually arrived in the right person's hands took between five and six connections or degrees. The majority of the connections that were made ranged from two to ten.
In Milgram's most successful study, "217 chains were started and 64 were completed : a success rate of only 29%" (*). In another of his studies, only 5% of the participants completed the chain. It means that 95% of the people in the study never made the link to the person they were supposed to connect !
modern networking[]
Dr. Ivan Misner is the founder of BNI, Business Network International. He believes the 6 degrees of separation is a mythic widespread urban legend because some people are better connected than others. Moreover people can complete the chain directly using better tools.
--Mike DeAngelo 18:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
- Source : Could It Be a Big World After All ? The Six Degrees of Separation Myth by Judith S. Kleinfeld, Forthcoming, Society, 2002