For most people working in the social network space, the theory of Six Degrees of Separation is well known, although not necessarily well understood. Alberto Barabasi's work Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else explores the subject extremely well as does Duncan Watts in his more popular book Six Degrees: The Science of a connected age. Both authors provide a perspective on Stanely Milgram's original experiment that used letters and real people to prove we are only six hops away from anyone else if we really want to get to anyone through the people we know directly. Apparently 5.2 to is the actual figure.
The key learning is that a single node (or person) in the network does not need to know about the entire population of nodes in order to navigate to any other node. Often when we use the phrase "it's a small world" in a social setting, for example, when we meet someone through what seems to be an obscure, unrelated association; we're really saying "I never dreamed you could possibly know someone, I know (or even a friend of one of one of my friends)". How could you possibly have access to the contents of a first degree friend's private address book, let alone a friend of a friend's? But by intelligently estimating people you know, who may know someone else because of other information you have about them, you can select several different paths and be certain about reaching your chosen individual.
Milgram's ground breaking research is now being applied to solve a serious internet congestion problem that threatens to cripple the internet. The social life of routers describes the research findings in more detail, but the point here is; All living things are structured like social networks and behave like social networks. Some of the planet's most intractable problems will be solved by understanding biological and atomic processes. This also applies to corporations stressed out from the credit crunch, but for most of them, it's the last place they will look for solutions.
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