Guest Author - Lana R. Mixon
The other day I was reading the msnbc.com news and noticed an article titled: “Microsoft confirms Kevin Bacon Theory”. I looked at the catchy title and thought, what the heck is the "Kevin Bacon Theory"? Of course, I know who Kevin Bacon is, but a Kevin Bacon Theory? So, I began reading and realized it was about the urban myth of six degrees of social separation. Of course, I am familiar with the social separation theory, but I wasn’t familiar with the “Kevin Bacon” nickname for it.
In June 2006, Microsoft researchers studied all of the world’s text messages, an astonishing 30 billion!
Here’s a quote from the article that explains the research:
“For the purposes of the study, two people were considered to be acquaintances if they had sent one another an instant message. Examining the minimum chain lengths it would take to connect all the users in the database, they found the average length was 6.6 steps and that 78% of the pairs could be connected in seven links or fewer.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7539329.stm
I live in a city of over 100, 000 people. There are numerous small towns encroaching upon the city limits. My husband and I both moved here when we around age 8 and have worked for about 30 years in the community. It seems that a day doesn’t goes by that I realize almost everyone in this city knows each other through one person or another or is related to them. My husband has often joked that the six degrees of separation doesn’t apply to Lafayette, it’s a much smaller number!
So, what do these findings tell us? Are we more closely connected to each other than we previously realized? Well, maybe so. I think that networking has great potential in the area of finding employment. Two of my most recent jobs were found through networking. I started thinking about applying this theory to myself…I thought about our current, US President, George Bush. It would only take me four chain lengths to make the connection. Ummm…so perhaps there is some truth to this Urban Myth? Here’s the other thing…I have never found a need to “text message” anyone, but if this research is up-to-par, then I may have to change my mind about “text messages”. They may have provided us with some excellent information.
