the small world problem -
In “The Small-World Problem”, Milgram carries out a very ingenious study, in which he has differing and numerous people pass along a folder to their acquaintances and friends in order to deliver it to a designated target person in New York. When I first read Milgram’s theory that everyone is separated by six degrees, I was struck by the idea. How could it possibly be that any two people from different parts of the world could be connected to each other by the people that they knew? I can’t help but wonder whether the success of his study was due to the fact that he carried out the experiment in a country such as US, where communication has a strong solid base in the society. Would the study have succeeded in a country that isn’t as developed, both economically and communication-wise, as the US? What if the experiment had been carried out in continents such as Africa or the Amazon where there are still many different tribes inhabiting the region? If the starter and target person were from differing tribes, would the study the folder have reached the target person in 6 intermediaries?
Also, I was struck that both target people, the “wife of the divinity school student” who lived in Cambridge, (64) and the “stockbroker who worked in Boston and lived in Sharon, Massachussetts” (64), lived in major cities. Since the starters were given the address and general information about these people, could the fact that they resided in big cities have influenced and somehow aided the process of reaching the target person?
Gladwell’s piece on The New Yorker was very entertaining. However, his paper is largely based on Malcolm’s study, and the stories that he presented of Lois Weisberg didn’t add to the credibility of the paper. The anecdotes made it a fast reading, but the lack of evidence to support his belief that people like Weisberg exist made me read the paper as entertainment, but not necessarily a credible source. The Sally Forth cartoon (Figure 16) that we had for last week shows a woman asking information for the "old-boy network" phone number. Clearly, such a thing does not officially exist, which makes me believe that even though people like Weisberg would be very helpful and practical to have, it would be very hard to find someone like that.
Q: Would Gladwell consider Weisberg a gatekeeper?
Milgram and Korte introduce the term gatekeeper in “Acquaintance Networks between racial groups”. It was very interesting to see that “80% of the incompleted Negro-target chains never crossed the racial barrier” (106). Could it be said that, given the low success in crossing the racial barrier, there aren’t as many people that could be considered gatekeepers? If this is the case, how would two communities such as the Negro and white community successfully and actively interact? What is most striking is that the experiment was carried out in New York. If two communities have a hard time interacting in such a big and varied city as New York, is it true that cities are isolating people and communities from one another? Are cities creating anonymity in its members that people who can interact with a variety of people, such as gatekeepers, are a minority?
It was very helpful to be able to contrast the results from Killworth’s experiment to those of Milgram’s. If it is true that “in 80% of small world chains, an error is made somewhere” (92), then one might wonder whether the information that was provided to Milgram’s starters could have been one of the big factors of the study’s success. However, the authors do say that personal attributes might have had an influence on the choices that were made because the study involved a closed system.
Q: Would personal attributes play a role when two closed systems were trying to contact each other?
The last reading by Watts was a thorough description of the different network structures and the way these are analyzed in the present days with the help of different sciences, such as mathematics and physics. Even though he mentions several scientific ways of successfully measuring networks and their structures, I kept thinking about Killworth’s conclusion that says that personal attributes could have influenced the way in which networks work. So it would have been informative if Watts had included a model, if it exists, in which science and personal attributes were combined in the study of networking. And if there weren’t any models, an explanation as to why these kind of models wouldn’t work would have been helpful as well.
Q: What kind of impact do you predict that these scientific models will have on the way that network knowledge is used by certain parts of the companies, such as the health care system, manufacturers?