CONNECTIONS
1.1
7
5
Complete these sentences to make them true for
you. Compare your ideas with a partner.
1
The best way to track down a person who doesn’t
use social media is …
2
I like to stay in touch with people who …
3
If I bumped into an old friend after ten years, I’d …
4
I like to keep track of what my friends are doing by …
5
A person I have lost contact with who I wish I hadn’t is …
6
It is easier to get in touch with people when …
7
The best time of day to catch up with people is …
READING
6
a
Read the title of the article. What do you think it
will be about? What do you think are the ‘Six degrees
of separation’?
6
b
Now read the article and check your predictions.
7
Complete the sentences with no more than three
words and/or a number.
1
The majority of our communication is with
people.
2
The ‘Six degrees of separation’ idea dates from
.
3
In the 1960s, an American sociologist attempted
to
.
4
The participants only had knowledge of the name,
location of the target.
5
The average number of steps to deliver the packets
was between
.
6
The results of the experiment appeared in
.
7
A recreation of Milgram’s experiment took place
in
.
8
The most recent experiment looked at the connections
between
social-media users.
8
Find verbs and nouns in the article that are
connected to scientific study.
9
Reacting to the text
Discuss these questions in
small groups.
1
What is your opinion of the ideas in the article about
how closely people are connected?
2
How do you think the internet has improved
communication?
3
What are the negative aspects of the internet in
relation to communication?
4
Is any communication really ‘private’ these days?
SPEAKING AND WRITING
10
a
Work in small groups. Discuss these questions
about non-verbal communication in your culture.
• Greetings and saying goodbye
– What do people
do (shake hands, kiss, bow, wave, etc.)? Does age or
gender make a difference?
• Personal space
– How near do people usually stand
when talking? Do they ever touch?
• Silence
– How important is this?
• Body language
– Do people use a lot of gestures?
Which gestures are common? Are there any gestures
you should avoid?
•
Eye contact
– Is this important at all times?
10
b
How important are the above in more formal
situations (giving a presentation/speech, taking part in
a seminar/meeting, etc.)?
11
Write a list of the most important things to consider
when communicating with people from Bahrain.
In the last few decades, the theory and the
phrase has appeared again. It was first the
Ɵtle of a play and then a film. Then, in the
mid-1990s, two college students invented
the game ‘Six degrees of Kevin Bacon’. They
wondered how many movies the actor had
been in, and how many actors he had worked
with. The idea of the game is to link any actor
to Kevin Bacon through no more than six links.
In 2003, Columbia University tried to recreate
Milgram’s experiment on the internet. This
became known as the Columbia Small World
project. The experiment involved 24,163
email chains with eighteen target people
in thirteen different countries. The results
confirmed that the average number of links
in the chain was six.
Most recently, an experiment in 2011 at the
University of Milan analysed the relaƟonship
between 721 million social media users and
found that 92 percent were connected by only
four stages, or five degrees of separaƟon.
So, think about it for a minute. How might
you be connected to a celebrity, poliƟcian or
sports star?
‘Think for a minute … interesƟng ideas you need to know about’
Research shows we have regular communicaƟon with between seven and fiŌeen
people, and that most of our communicaƟon is in fact with the closest five to ten
people. However, perhaps we are closer to the rest of the world than we think.
‘Six degrees of separaƟon’ is the theory that any person on Earth can be connected
to any other person through a chain of not more than five other people.
T
he concept goes back to a 1929 book of short stories called
Everything is Different
by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy. He was very interested in friendship
networks and his ideas influenced many of the early ideas about social networks.
In the 1950s, two scienƟsts tried to prove the theory mathemaƟcally, but aŌer
twenty years, they sƟll had not been successful. In 1967, an American sociologist
called Stanley Milgram tried a new method to test the theory, which he called
the ‘Small-world problem’. He chose at random a sample of people in the
middle of America and asked them to send packages to a stranger in the state
of MassachuseƩs. The people sending the packages only knew the name, job
and general locaƟon of the people. Milgram told them to send the package to a
person they knew personally who they thought might know the target person. This
person would then send the parcel onto a contact of theirs unƟl the parcel could
be personally delivered to the correct person. Amazingly, it took only between five
and seven people to get the packets delivered, and the results were published in
the magazine
Psychology Today
. It was this research that inspired the phrase ‘Six
degrees of separaƟon’.
HOW CLOSELY CONNECTED ARE WE? or
'SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION'
