32 degrees of the planet Earth

Judith S. Kleinfeld has researched Stanley Milgram's famous "Six Degrees of Separation" theory and found no real supporting evidence but made some other interesting observations along the way in Could It Be A Big World Afterall?.

The idea that people are connected through just "six degrees of separation," based on Stanley Milgram's "small world study," has become part of the intellectual furniture of educated people. New evidence discovered in the Milgram papers in the Yale archives, together with a review of the literature on the "small world problem," reveals that this widely-accepted idea rests on scanty evidence. Indeed, the empirical evidence suggests that we actually live in a world deeply divided by social barriers such as race and class.

Kleinfeld also raises the question about the internet and its questionable 'global village' metaphor. Does the internet really make you part of something or does it just let you stay-away closer?

People in the western world have been told for over a hundred years, he points out, that technology is making the world smaller and what we have witnessed instead is people banding together along ethnic bloodlines with bloody consequences as in the Middle East and the Balkans. Could our coming together through technology have had the unintended consequence of driving us apart? Cultural groups may set up psychological boundaries when geographic boundaries slip away.

But are 'psychological boundaries' forged on the aether something that brings people closer together? I really don't know but I do worry about the continuing 'bunkering' of the population where you only leave the house for groceries and work. The world in my burbclave seems very non-interactive.

The world isn't small, we are.