Small-world, Six Step Ahead assignment2

Small-world, Six Step Ahead

The accessibility between a gondolier in Venice and the president of the United States may not as faint as many people think. I have read somewhere that everyone on this planet is separated by only six other people which termed as six degrees of separation .It is extremely a comforting idea ,especially with the advert of web 2.0 in information age . And increasing number of social networking sites (SNS) are based on this theory ,a more suitable name ,”small world problem”. The contemporary civilization witnesses the favorable change and the untoward effects.
First of all, the foundation theory six degrees of separation should be plainly illustrated prior to the further exploration. In 1967, American socialist Stanley Milgram devised a way to test this theory ,which he called “the small–world problem” . He randomly selected people in the mid-west to send the package to a stranger located in Massachusetts .The senders knew the recipient’s name ,occupation and general location .They were instructed to send the package to a person who they thought was most likely to know the target personally .That person would do the same and so on until the package was personally delivered to this target recipient .Although, the participants expected the chain to include at least a hundred intermediaries ,it only take (on average) between five and seven intermediaries . Inspired by this experiment, another scientist Watts substituted e-mail for package and renewed the trial. Surprisingly, after reviewing the date, he found that the average number of intermediaries was indeed six. This phenomenon demonstrates that how dainty the world could be and grants us a mesmerizing promise that the distance to our idol, celebrities and our Mr. Right or Miss Right is not that far. While the architect of the new era would say “Stanley Milgram , meet Tim Berners-Lee” ,which open up a promising web2.0, whose principal characteristic is SNS.
SNS allow users to interact and collaborate with each other as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where people are limited to the passive viewing of content .Through SNS, people curl up in their cozy world .Everyone is the god of his small world. For example, the average distance on Twitter is 4.67. About 50% of people on Twitter are only four steps away from each other, while nearly everyone is five steps or less away. In another work,researchers have shown that the average distance of 1,500 random users in Twitter is 3.435. Just as a classic Buddhism puts it ,the immense ocean can be funneled into a fine fur, the infinite cosmos can be crammed into a tiny mustard .It is exultant to enjoy the magical dialectical world through SNS.
Besides ,SNS turns people as an factor of scale effect for good purpose. 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. Bacon started the network with celebrities who are highlighting their favorite charities and he encouraged everyone to be celebrities for their own causes by joining the Six Degrees movement."SixDegrees.org is about using the idea that we are all connected to accomplish something good," said Bacon. "It is my hope that Six Degrees will soon be something more than a game or a gimmick. It will also be a force for good, by bringing a social conscience to social networking." SNS pool the human resource from worldwide and maximum it to create a warm nest for us.
Yet, it is an old story :like a new efficient technology winds up costing far more time than it ever saves ,the shrink-world-technology ends up expand more distance than it ever shorten to some degrees. Growing numbers of people are becoming addicted to virtual messaging. Among those extreme cases was a married couple who could only communicate by virtual message, even when they were sitting side by side. People are spending more time and sharing more information on the Internet at the expense of face-to-face conversations. The concern is that too much virtual talk makes us uncomfortable with more intimate face-to-face conversations .What’s worse, the discounted promise of the theory may disappoint us ,when we eventually realize there is always a gap between ourselves and the object we are in fascination. One may click “at” sign to create a connection with his or her icon and unbosom himself or herself to the icon something will make others goose flesh, yet it cannot change a bit the relationship of a retarded fan and a superstar.
Six degrees of separation offers us a way to review the world from the visual angle of God ,like seeing the panorama of whole world from a crystal-ball .However, when someone is so enchanted that he wants to have a touch .The coldness of the transparent block will remind him the dislocation between reality and virtual world. That is the dilemma we are in and I think it can be solved until the development of SNS reach such a level that we can smell , touch and feel the figure behind the screen. At that moment the six step for a man will mark a giant leap for mankind.