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kallistiiMany PG fans will know of Stanley Milgram from the famous Milgram experiment (Obedience to Authority Study) , but many people presence here, including those here on LJ are, in some ways, a product of another experiment by Mr. Milgram.
Just about everyone has run across the "Small world phenomenon" at some point....a friend of a friend of a friend...turns out to be the Queen of England. It seems that there are, on average, about a chain of 6 people on average, or so the popular idea goes. But where did this come from?
A Hungarian writer, Frigyes Karinthy, first wrote about this phenomenon in a short story called "Chains", published in 1929. I haven't been able to read a copy of the story, but all descriptions say that it explores this idea. The next noted exploration of the concept came 21 years later when Ithiel de Sola Pool (MIT) and Manfred Kochen (IBM) researched this concept, attempting to calculate a numerical value of how many links there are between two random people, but their results (approx 3-4), didn't satisfy them.
So there the phenomenon sat until mid 1960's, when Milgram, already famous/infamous at this point for his "Obedience to Authority Study" decided to take a look at this phenomenon. He devised an experiment which consisted of asking a number of people in Wichita, Kansas to deliver a letter to a student living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although the vast majority of the letters went astray, the letters (5%) that did arrive yielded some interesting information. In the paper titled "The Small World Problem", published in 1967 in the May issue of Psychology Today exposed people to the idea that we are, on average, only 6 links away from any other person. It is from this document that we get the concept of six degrees of separation.
The first major social networking website on the net was inspired by and named after this idea; SixDegrees.com. It's success has led to a number of other sites, including this one, Live Journal.
So ultimately, have to thank the ghost of Stanley Milgram for this wonderful website where we are now communicating on, and networking across...and say "Hello" to the Queen for me!
Just about everyone has run across the "Small world phenomenon" at some point....a friend of a friend of a friend...turns out to be the Queen of England. It seems that there are, on average, about a chain of 6 people on average, or so the popular idea goes. But where did this come from?
A Hungarian writer, Frigyes Karinthy, first wrote about this phenomenon in a short story called "Chains", published in 1929. I haven't been able to read a copy of the story, but all descriptions say that it explores this idea. The next noted exploration of the concept came 21 years later when Ithiel de Sola Pool (MIT) and Manfred Kochen (IBM) researched this concept, attempting to calculate a numerical value of how many links there are between two random people, but their results (approx 3-4), didn't satisfy them.
So there the phenomenon sat until mid 1960's, when Milgram, already famous/infamous at this point for his "Obedience to Authority Study" decided to take a look at this phenomenon. He devised an experiment which consisted of asking a number of people in Wichita, Kansas to deliver a letter to a student living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although the vast majority of the letters went astray, the letters (5%) that did arrive yielded some interesting information. In the paper titled "The Small World Problem", published in 1967 in the May issue of Psychology Today exposed people to the idea that we are, on average, only 6 links away from any other person. It is from this document that we get the concept of six degrees of separation.
The first major social networking website on the net was inspired by and named after this idea; SixDegrees.com. It's success has led to a number of other sites, including this one, Live Journal.
So ultimately, have to thank the ghost of Stanley Milgram for this wonderful website where we are now communicating on, and networking across...and say "Hello" to the Queen for me!
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Date: 2006-05-17 01:06 pm (UTC)Speaking of such, my father knows someone who was friends with JPII ... Dad did a procedures on at least 2 famous people... Whom I cannot name because of confidentiality. And I've known loads of famous people in the Irish music world. Well, people who were well known in the nineties, not so much now. Name someone, I might know them.
So, I'm one person away from Sarah McLachlan, and you're two :-)
Also, you know someone who's played with the Cheiftans :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-05-18 03:06 am (UTC)I've never had a chance to see the Cheiftans...I was hoping to see them when I was living in North Wilkesboro, NC, as they were supposed to appear at Merle Fest...but I moved back to Canada before the Merle Fest happened.
ttyl