We have all used the cliché phrase "What a small world!" when you've just realised that the man you work with is in fact the uncle to your friend you used to know from school, or something along those lines. However, recently it has got me thinking about how small the world really is; theoretically of course. It seems you can't tell a story these days without interrupting "Ahh yes, Pete. I know him!" This curiosity is what originally lead me to learning about the 'The Six Degrees of Separation'.
'The Six Degrees of Separation' is a theory, created by Hungarian journalist Frigyes Karinthy, which is that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else, through six people or less. Now you may be thinking, that's not possible, I don't know some random person in Texas!? Well let me explain it like this, say I work with a man called Keith, Keith's wife is called Emma, Emma knows Matt who lives in New York, Matt works with Phil who is originally from Texas and at school Phil was in the same class as Billy and Billy's second aunt lives down your street. It is a never ending cycle.
As nice as it is to think that the entire world is one community that is all interlinked, I'm not entirely convinced. Firstly, my scepticism comes from the fact that this theory is scientifically unproven and secondly I find it hard to believe that since there are over 6 billion people on Earth, some in sparsely populated mountainous areas of the Himalayas for example, that they are all somehow connected to me by an 'imaginary net system'.
Luckily, there has been plenty of research which has helped to dull my doubt, a piece I find particularly interesting is when Professor Duncan Watts from Columbia University, in 2001, used an email experiment that involved him sending his entire contact list "a package" that needed to be delivered with instructions to send it to their entire contact list, they did so and this pattern continued till at the end of the experiment there were 48,000 senders from 157 different countries, which goes to show just how far "the package" travelled. In conclusion Watts found that the average number of intermediaries was around six people, before someone received the same email for a second time, therefore in a small way confirming the six step theory is possible.
I thank the advanced technological period we live in now for this seemingly shrinking world, the mass use of phones, the internet and the many different social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, have all contributed to the ease of connecting and conversing with people globally.
The effortlessness of travel is another major factor that helps link this imaginary net system together, with people travelling to work daily and holidays having become common place, with the average family going abroad annually, meeting people all over the world is very normal. In 2010 alone 858,427 British people flew to Bulgaria, therefore it is not unlikely that your boss Sue could of met Victor whilst she was out there and now you're connected to Victor's, sister's, boyfriend's, friend whose ex works in the office next to you. When you think of it like that, it doesn't seem too unbelievable that everyone is linked in some far fetched way.
It is all very confusing and quite interesting and I bet next time you let your mind drift you'll be wondering how you are connected to everyone sitting around you.
More figures on global travel: http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/datasets/where-people-flew-from-the-uk-in-2/versions/1