I get to thinking on long drives for work, cruising in the country side just an hour outside of a pretty big city, Minneapolis, how GRAND in size this thing we call Earth is. Miles and miles of nothing but pastures, fields and scattered about clumps of wooded areas. Then I think about how long it would take me to drive to, let's say, Milwaukee, and how much MORE un-used open space I would see on that semi-short 5 hour drive. Then I think about all the other cities and directions I could go, and then my mind jumps to a grander scale, Mexico.... and Canada! (eh?) And then all the nooks and crannies of countries I've never been to, nor could point out on a map.
It is really difficult to wrap my head around HOW BIG the land mass we live on really is. But with this knowledge (or lack there of) of how big this world is, the science behind the theory of 6 degrees of separation has really been fascinating me lately. I must attest, I do believe it has it's merits. I am no statistician, but regularly on business trips or vacations in general, I meet someone who knows someone, who knows someone, that I know. Just this past trip I took to NC, one of my manufacturer reps dated a girl I went to High School with. What are the odds of that?
I really enjoyed this video which (even though it is a few years old) shows how technology and improvements in every day communication are lowering the degrees in which one person can be connected to another. The fact that they used Kevin Bacon (my favorite actor, The River Wild, anyone?) as the main POC for the theory probably made me more intrigued about this topic too. I think it would be cool to see if we could get a few Steemians to try and 'connect' with another Steemian in less than 6 connections. In the end, the goal is to be a community anyway, right? Feel free to start the experiment :)
Pic sourced from google images