Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Six degrees of frustration
I like to cause kak on the roads. I like to make people know that they have erred. I like to be the guy that jumps in front of you if you jump a red robot. I did this yesterday; some guy jumped the robot (strike one) nice and slowly on his cellphone (strike two). So I quickly shot in to first gear and popped in front of him in the middle of the road. Instead of reclining in his chair in shame he rolled down his window, stopped talking on his cellphone and launched at me with profanities like I haven't heard since my days at Uni (strike three).Like any dignified man would, I yelled back throwing equally horrid rubbish from my mouth at this man. We yelled for about 30 seconds and satisfied I drove off.I think that it took about 2 minutes for me to hit panic stations. I immediately spoke to myself:Nic: What the F*ck did you just do?Self: You just ruined a couple of business opportunities.Nic: What the hell are you talking about?Self: Well, what if you go in to your meetings next week and this guy is sitting there?Nic: Then he gets the last laugh and I get screwed.Self: Correctamundo my man!My self had won. Have you ever wondered how many people you know in Sandton, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, Africa, The World? It's a lot. In fact I think that you might be astounded that the number is a helluva lot more than you might think. I have blogged about Six Degrees of Separation before, but this is different, this is more of a fated coincidence designed to teach you a karmic slap-in-the-face-lesson. This is more worrisome in my mind.I like to cause kak on the roads (have I said that already?) and I think that one of these days the kak is going to end up on my head. Think about it and save yourself the embarrassment, simply choose not to become angry. It is a choice, make it.
Six degrees of social networks
The theory of six degrees of separation is a fairly well known one. For those of you who are in the dark, this is a theory that states that [almost] everyone in the world is no more than six steps away from every other person in the world. It's a pretty nifty theory I think.The reason that I am talking about this theory is that many people know the theory in relation to Kevin Bacon (the actor). I have heard that every person in the world is within six steps or less of Kevin. Firstly I always wondered how is that actually possible, prove it. Then I would wonder why the theory uses Kevin Bacon and not, for example, James Dean?Anyways, The Oracle of Bacon is one hell of a cool site that illustrates links from any Hollywood star, dead or alive, to Kevin. Go ahead, make my day, try and find an actor alive or dead without a link to Mr Bacon, I don't think you can do it.Then on to more pressing and interesting business:Six degrees of seperation and social networksFor a while now I have been wondering about the myspace/facebook/social network craze that is about. I wonder why, I wonder how, I wonder how many and what is it that these people are after. I think that the six degrees of separation is a very good explanation of what keeps people coming back.I have just over 160 friends on Facebook. If you don't think I do, go check my facebook out. Now let's put this theory to the test. There are approximately 7000 South Africans on Facebook. If I have 160 friends and counting and you multiply each person by 6, you get 960. That is an immediate network of 960 people that I know through my network of 160 (that's one step). If each of those 960 people multiply by 6 and extend their network to 5760 then within 2 steps I know 5760 people. One final example: take those 5760 people and extend their network by 6 and you get 34 560 people. There aren't even close to that many people in SA on Facebook.(Disclaimer: My mathematical understanding of six degrees of separation might be completely out of whack, but for the purposes of this post you just need to understand the principal of what I am trying to get across)I firmly believe that it is this theory that makes social network sites such as Facebook successful. If I had no desire to push my network to the extend of its network then I would have no drive to use these sites. Six degrees to keep social networking sites running.