Will My Message Make It to Taiwan?

As part of the experiment that Daryl wrote about earlier, each member of the class is emailing ten people they know in hopes that the message will make it to the CEO of a nonprofit in Taiwan. The hope is that we mirror Stanley Milgram’s “Small Worlds” experiment that involved delivering an envelope from Nebraska to a business man in Boston. Just like Milgram’s experiment, we cannot simply look up the person in the phone book or Google and get in touch with them. The message needs to be delivered by someone who already knows the target. Thus we must pass the message along to someone we feel is one “step” closer to the destination.

                But there is a big difference between a message crossing half of the United States and one crossing half of the globe. There are literally oceans separating us from our target. However, unlike Milgram, we have the power of the internet and email. This probably makes getting the message there a lot easier than if we were to mail it in an envelope. With the internet, geography doesn’t really play a large role.

                However, geography should probably still play a role in our social networks. For most of us, we are a lot more likely to be connected to someone in the U.S. than we are to someone in Taiwan. The messages in Milgram’s experiment that made it to their destination did it on average in about 5 or 6 steps.  Can we assume that there is really a path to this person in Taiwan that is only 5 or 6 degrees away? I believe that the increased globalization that has taken place since Milgram’s era probably negates this difference in distance. We are more connected with people across the globe than ever before through business, education, and even something like video games or social networking sites. But the ease of email may also work against us. Depending on who it is from, it’s a lot easier to have an email go unnoticed than an envelope with your name on it.

                The final issue that leaves me doubting this experiments success is that Milgram wasn’t really that successful with his experiment. Of the 296 letters that were mailed to start, only 64 reached the destination. With a failure rate over 70%, can I really expect any success?

Actually, with all this in mind, I’m guessing that we get the same kind of success. It seems like all the advantages and disadvantages in comparison with Milgram’s experiment cancel each other out.