Global Crisis/Innovation Blog

How Internet Brings People Closer Together

By Shlomo Maital

In his seminal article 43 years ago, psychologist Stanley Milgram showed how very small our world is,  in his Small World experiment. [1] Milgram showed we are only, on average, six ‘degrees of separation’ apart from one another.

According to Wikipedia: Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the “Human Web”)  refers to the idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person, so that a chain of, “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to deliver a package from one person to any other randomly-chosen person in six steps or fewer.

Now come several new studies showing how the Internet has sharply reduced those six degrees to three or fewer.

  • In 2001 a Columbia University Professor, Duncan Watts, used an email as a ‘package’ and found , with 48,000 senders and 19 targets in 157 countries, the average number of intermediaries was six.
  • The average distance on Twitter (based on a study of 5.2 billion ‘relationships’ when Twitter users follow other users)  is 4.67.
  • Twitterers, or Tweaters, who also belong to the 14 largest Yahoo groups have only 3 degrees of separation.
  • Yahoo Groups, in turn, the world’s biggest online discussion boards, have 150 million members, and 10 million groups, in 25 languages.  This is perhaps even more surprising than Facebook’s 500 m. users, because Yahoo’s discussion groups create meaningful conversation, communication and interaction.  The biggest are “Athenians”, “Pure capitalism”, “Capitalists forever”, “globaltaxrevolt”, “blowback”, “clearcutforum”, “fireflyflash”…etc.

Milgram’s original study got a package from someone in the American Midwest to a pastor in Cambridge, MA.    Today, we can get an email message from anyone, anywhere, to anyone else, anywhere, in about the same number of handoffs.

In this smaller shrunken world, will the Internet ultimately foster the idea that all of us are brothers and sisters, regardless of ethnicity, race or religion, and that we can use technology to achieve deeper human understanding?

Will the tendency of our political leaders to lead us into conflicts and wars be replaced by the tendency of ordinary people surfing the Web to seek understanding and peace?

[1] Stanley Milgram, “The Small World Problem”, Psychology Today, 1967, Vol. 2, 60-67.