The Wisdom Of Crowds

Now, I've come to a realisation that the world is shrinking. Perhaps, that 6 degrees of separation theory is true afterall.

"Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person he or she knows and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people he or she knows, then everyone is an average of six "steps" away from each person on Earth"

- Wikipedia.com

Nowadays, it seems that everyone knows each other without knowing that everyone they know, know each other too. Funny isn't it?

For example, Bob knows Billy and Billy knows Bobby and Bobby is Bob's friend but Bob has no idea that Bobby knows Billy too, neither do Billy and Bobby know that Bob knows Bobby and Billy respectively.

Dizzy?

OK, let me give you another example based on my experience.

Last month, I met a new friend introduced by my friend basically because her friend gave me a ride home.

However, a week later, I checked on my other friend's friendster profile who lives hundreds of miles away in Kelantan. To my surprise, I saw a picture where my new friend was standing next to him. They know each other but they didn't have any idea that each of them know me too. At that time, it hit me that world is indeed, small.

In another example, like just now, I checked out my other friend's myspace profile. Currently she works at Raoul. To my another surprise, I saw a picture of her and her colleagues and one of her colleagues is someone that I know too. I met her colleague last year in IIUM debate championship as my team fought against his team that time. But, the same thing happened, that they have no idea yet that they both are related to me. And I believe that her colleague knows my Kelantan friend as well as three of us are from the same group of people which is debate and my Kelantan friend is also a friend to her colleague's teammate. Therefore, this example is connected to the other example above and thus, creating a chain.

Probably, if I do more research which including another spying and skodeng on other people's friendster and myspace profiles, who knows, there are more chains to it and as a result, we might be connected to one another without knowing it. It's either that the 6 degrees of separation theory is true or debate that brings us together. As Syazana once said, "It's as though, you debaters are connected by blood and marriage".

:)