"6 Degrees of Separation"

Back in college, I saw one of the coolest plays ever. Not only was it entertaining, and superbly acted out, but the message was SO real; the theory on which the play was all based makes so much sense.

So, I went to WIKIPEDIA to share with you guys an accurate explanation of the theory ;)

"Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularised by a play written by John Guare."

Isn't this theory just fascinating?! We are often amazed by the 'interconnectedness of the human network' (this is wikipedia talking still jaja), which we usually refer to as the small world effect. "Wow, what a small world this is!"

Well, this week, I proved this theory once again (of the many times that I already have). One of my best friends lives in LA, and writes me a message through Facebook saying: "Yesterday, through a friend that doesn't know you, I met Lari, who saw a picture of you in my house and was so shocked to once again prove how small the world is! She is friends with Smardi, your big brother's ex-girlfriend!"

There it is; in ways you least expect it; defying huge distances, even! I mean, Smardi and I live in Dominican Republic, my brother lives in Boston, and Sar and Lari live in LA, and we didn't all know each other, but through the interconnectedness that existed, which became evident through a series of events, NOW we all do.

I just mentioned a key word in the paragraphs above. FACEBOOK has become a powerful tool in this matter! Through Facebook, I along millions of people, have found it extremely interesting to see which friends one has COMMON friends with. "What?! Such and such knows such and such?! But I know them from very different networks!"

Googling this great theory, I came across Paul Walk's Weblog, which talks about Facebook and the Six Degrees of Separation theory. These are some of the things he says (so interesting!):

• I recently got invited to participate in Karl Bubyan’s Six Degrees of Separationapplication in Facebook. This application navigates the ’social graph’ in Facebook, offering a couple of tools to allow the user to test the ‘Six degrees of separation‘ hypothesis. The application and its interface seem quite slick - and it has the now obligatory visualisation (reproduced here).

• So I suggest that for any actual person in whom you are interested, Facebook presents two degrees of separation

• This tool is quite interesting in terms of what it allows the user to discover about their relationship to other, named, users.

You can read more of him here:

http://blog.paulwalk.net/2007/10/08/no-degrees-of-separation/

So...can somebody figure out my 6 links to............Jhonny Depp, pleaseeeee! : p