If we take the premis of "Six Degrees " we can easily find that the root of
the infestation is the human element. Thus finding that another instance of
it exists in a human driven social order (ie freinds, sex partners, web
pages, etc) is pretty much treading on familar ground.
It is an epiphinal moment when you suddenly "see" the linkages splayed out
before you in a system of study, but look around and you will see the
epiphany is far from a localized phenom.
There was a party game out not so long ago called The Kevin Bacon game. The
idea was to link a person to Kevin Bacon in as few links as possible.
A few of us generalized the rules and called it "You Can Get Here from
There"...Name two people, then name a media type (movies books radio music
etc) and link them in the shortest possible path.
After a while of playing this you can find Nexuses, people or things that
have large numbers of connectivity. For instance, when tring to link
filmstars who worked in the 70s, go for an Irwin Allen disaster Film.
Yes, the Unified Field Theory of Connectivity is indeeed...THE FORCE..
So mind where you step.