Word Dropping-- Six Degrees

Six Degrees of Separation

The other day I met Abhishek, an avid Orkutter friend of mine; and was telling him about one Mr Jaysimha I had met. Jaysimha had thrown up a lucrative career in airlines to become a memory technique teacher, and prior to that he had obtained six post-graduate degrees while working. “Six degrees is quite something, isn’t it?” I said.
“It’s all about six degrees my friend, he said. Between all of us there are six degrees,” he said.
“Well, I am quite happy with my three degrees; and you are happy with the only one you have, isn’t it?” I said.
“Fool. Haven’t you heard of six degrees of separation? Haven’t you heard of Stanley Milgram?” Abhishek was agitated.
“Well I have heard of ages of separation. But this degree thing sounds quite jazzy to me,” I chuckled.
“Well when you open Orkut and click on anyone’s name, a link is shown between you and that person. That person is a friend of a friend or something like that. It’s a small world, you see,” he reflected.
“I guess so,” I said, “the word itself is becoming the world. Just type words on your computer and you have the world inside your room.”
“Exactly,” said the Orkutter, “And Frigyes Karinthy had foreseen it in the early 20th century. The Hungarian writer wrote a story called “Chains” where he said that everyone is linked to any other person by just six other human beings. That was fiction. Then Stanley Milgram conducted experiments in the 1960s and came up with the same idea. Since then, the idea has spawned all over, and it is increasingly believed that any person in any field is away from any other person by just six links. John Duares’ play in the 1990s made the term really popular, and then there were songs and films and everything.”
“Quite a scary thought,” I said, “that Bin Laden is just six steps away from me. If Bush gets to know this, he is also just six degrees away, and then third degree torture may just a degree away.”