back in 1929, hungarian author frigyes karinthy penned his short story ‘chain links’.  chain links isn’t a story i’m  very familiar with but i’m certainly familiar with the theory proposed in it, ‘6 degrees of separation’.    perhaps you are also.

in a nutshell, 6 degrees of separation proposes that any two people in the world can be connected through the relationships of 6 other people.  it’s basically a formula for figuring out the distance of social networks.

though it circulated as an urban myth for almost a quarter century, in the 60’s it  gained credibility through research at MIT  and harvard then later was popularized by psychology today.  in 2007,  microsoft finally  provided proof of its validity in analyzing 39 billion instant messenger conversations, confirming the path distance between any two people to be 6.6 degrees.

that may or may not be entirely accurate if you’re trying to connect yourself to some unknown rainforest tribe.  but if you ask me, it’s a pretty amazing discovery originally founded…