Degrees of Freedom & Chapter 1

Hypothesis #1.
The Book "Six degrees of Separation" discussed the testing of the concept that Humanity (at least the developed & developing World) is inter-connected with six degrees of separation between people. This indicates we are inter-connected in a relatively tight pattern.
A good analogy is a fluid, like water, where many connections are continuously being formed & broken. The properties of water are fairly clearly defined and predictable, although the behaviour of an individual molecule is unpredictable.

It would appear that this predictability is also possible for a large enough group of people. The lowered transaction cost of the internet is enabling the autonomous formation and identification of specific short term groups. This behaviour gives rise to a several possibilities.

Banks (and the rest of us) have recently experienced how a high level of inter-connection enables new actions and sometimes unpredictable consequences.

Hypothesis #1. Tipping points are propagated through a highly inter-connected network very rapidly.


One of the learning's from the "Six degrees of Separation"experience is that there are "star points" or major players through which a large amount of traffic is switched. Monitoring these points gives a lot of data about what is going one in the network. If we consider the impact of "controlling" what happens at these points we can start considering them as Constraints; as in the Theory of Constraints (TOC). If we apply the TOC 5 focusing steps to our network what happens?

Hypothesis #2. Management of the Star-Points in a network enables control & direction of the network.