Tonight the hubby and I caught part of a documentary in Discovery Channel entitled, “The Power of Six Degrees.” It gave the scientific basis for a popular game involving Kevin Bacon and how every actor was at most six degrees (steps) separated from him.
For somebody who works in “new media”, I was fascinated to see how technology makes our world smaller. It isn’t so much a flat world, as Thomas Friedman asserts. Rather, it is still a round world, but made smaller and tighter by networks of people.
I wish the program could have explored more how the theory can be applied to the explosion of social networking today. And how we can harness the power of six degrees of connectedness (rather than separation) to reach practical results.
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I was wondering the same thing! I remember hearing about six degrees of separation years and years ago and the theory is we’re six degrees away from everyone in the world. BUT that was before things like Twitter and Facebook.
I would hazard to guess we are now only really ONE degree away from anyone using tools like Twitter. I mean it’s really easy for me to connect directly with Obama’s team or Tony Robbins now where years ago there would be no way I could just call them up and say ‘hey Tony, nice work’ LOL
@Angela Yeah, isn’t it so cool that we can communicate so easily with people we look up to, now? Twitter has really brought people more closely into networks. Oh and Facebook! Even though I can hardly make my way around it, I have connected with people I went to school with… 20 years ago! Isn’t it exciting that all these changes are happening in our lifetime? I cannot imagine how things will be like when my kids are grown up.