The Small World Problem summary

Reading: Six Degrees- Duncan J Watts

One section that stood out to me in this reading was Milgram’s fascination with networking.

Social psychologist Stanley Milgram details his experiment he conducted in 1967.
He was fascinated with the unresolved hypothesis circulating in the sociological community of the day.

The world viewed as an enormous network of social acquaintances was recognised as small- it took only a few steps to connect people to other networks of friends- it was called the small world problem.
Easily understood as when two people meet for the first time and realise they have mutual friends and usually follow with the overused saying ‘’small world’’

Milgram was interested in the unexplored ground of networks, particularly the relationship between networks and any kind of dynamics, he wanted to explore the world in a new way.

More on Stanley Milgram –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_J._Watts