Six Degrees of Separation, I am connected to Rupert Murdoch
Six degrees of separation is the hypothesis that anyone on Earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances with no more than five intermediaries.
The hypothesis was first proposed in 1929 by the Hungarian writer Karinthy Frigyes in a short story called Chains. The concept is based on the idea that the number of acquaintances grows exponentially with the number of links in the chain, and so only a small number of links is required for the set of acquaintances to become the whole human population.
By extension, the same term is often used to describe any other setting in which some form of link exists between individual entities in a large set. For example, “see also” links in a dictionary entry may point the reader to other entries in the same dictionary; after following only six such links, the reader could potentially get to any word in the dictionary that has a link to it. In this special case of a dictionary, it is sometimes called the six links rule.
See, I know this guy, Eric Hufschmid personally. He claims that Kathryn Hufschmid is his half-sister. Now who’s Kathryn Hufschmid? Drum roll please … Well, she’s James Murdoch’s wife! And who’s James Murdoch? Drum roll please … James Murdoch is the CEO of British Sky Broadcasting. He was formerly an executive vice-president of News Corporation, the controlling shareholder of BSkyB, and served on the boards of directors of News Datacom and of News Corporation. With his wife Kathryn, née Hufschmid, he has two children. Who’s James Murdoch’s father? Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch!!! I am connected to Rupert Murdoch within six degrees of separation. Amazing …
