In his short story, "Two Little Tales," Mark Twain makes a strong case for the small worlds theory and its functionality. The first tale explains the troubles of one man who has developed a light, durable and inexpensive boot that would be beneficial to the country's soldiers. However, he could not get anyone in any position of authority to listen to this idea. He writes to the Director-General about his friend's invention. He even visits the office of the Director-General. All to no avail. The narrator, however, does not seem surprised. He understands why his friend has been unsuccessful and tells him that he's approached the situation the wrong way.
He uses the second tale as an example. In this tale, the Emperor of some state has become ill. Everyone is trying to figure out some way to help him. All kinds of physicians are called in to try to help the Emperor. Jimmy, our main character in this tale believes he has the solution but fears he will not be listened to. Luckily, Tommy has a solution. So how does he plan on getting this message to the Emperor? He tells the butcher, who will tell a woman who sells chestnuts, she tells her rich aunt, who will tell the game shop owner, and so on down the line of connections until reaching the Emperor. A brilliant scheme that makes perfect sense knowing what we know about networks and small worlds. Not surprisingly, the Emperor was cured.
So Mark Twain had this small worlds concept figured out half a century before Stanley Milgram. Even more surprisingly, there are still a lot of people that can't figure it out now. For the purposes of explaining this in a way that will be most recognizable to the greatest number of people I'm going to focus on a few fictitious instances.
We all know the situation. It plays out in so many movies. There is some impending disaster - terrorist attack, alien invasion, giant meteor, global warming - and our hero is trying desperately to get the people in charge to take the threat seriously. Jeff Goldblum is telling the president, Dan Akroyd is warning some general, etc. etc. It never works, or at least never in enough time to solve things smoothly. Now this makes for great drama, and, in some cases, great films, but Twain, Milgram, Watts and Strogatz all know the real way to get that message in front of the right people.
If only our protagonists were aware of their networks and their power. An urgent message wouldn't go unnoticed if it were delivered by the proper person. That is the power of small worlds. We may not have a strong enough tie with someone to get them to listen to us, but we are probably only a few degrees removed from someone who does. So there are applications for the findings of Milgram and others about small worlds. In fact, as evidenced by Twain, people were applying them before the definitive research had even been done. It's unfortunate that not everyone is aware of how close we all really are and how effective these ties can be at passing along information. Maybe for Hollywood's sake, that's ok.
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