>Some years ago (20?) a sociologist (I think at Harvard or MIT) ran
>an experiment on this priniciple and found that at least for the
>well-connected people in Cambridge the number of links was less
>than 3. He asked a group of people (probably a class in Socio 101)
>to get in touch with various people like Mao Tse Tung (ruler of
>China at that time), the Pope, etc. by finding someone who could
>call someone who could...
>
>This sounds like a modern version of the old boy's network.
Revelations of the linkages of the apparently unconnected groups we
travel in are often uncanny.
My wife is of Mennonite heritage. That group has historically been
somewhat closed in terms of marriage, gene pool and circulation (a common
trait of persecuted religious minorities, alas) -- such that connections
with apparent strangers are surprisingly common. There is a practice
called the "Game" among modern Mennonites that involves asking a few
pointed questions of new Mennonite folk you meet (questions about
education, background, etc.), which usually reveal that the interlocutors
have much in common. This kind of inquiry is especially fruitful when you
visit a new fellowship (a congregation) for the first time --
connections, no matter how unlikely they may seem to outsiders, always
emerge. Example: The first time we visited a Mennonite fellowship in West
Philadelphia (where we went to grad school), it took only five minutes of
conversation to discover someone there whose brother had been a
schoolmate of my wife's sister when she attended boarding school in
Zaire. As unique as that kind of tie might seem, I've seen similarly
"unique" revelations of this kind many times in the years since.
TH
----------------------------------------------------
Terry Harpold
Asst. Professor, Literature, Communication & Culture
Co-Associate Director for Internal Relations,
Graphics, Visualization & Usability Center
Georgia Institute of Technology
terry.harpold@lcc.gatech.edu
tharpold@cc.gatech.edu
http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/faculty/harpold/
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/terry.harpold/