Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (Open Market Edition) Review

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(More customer reviews)Contrary to some recent remarks from an apparently aggrieved reader, I think Six Degrees is actually quite different from most books claiming to cover new and exciting scientific developments. Far from being self-aggrandizing, I found it's tone remarkably humble and generous to others. Watts, in fact, is the first person to call his subject the "new" science of networks, and goes to considerable lengths to acknowledge, even glorify, his intellectual predecessors. He doesn't mention every scientist who has made contributions: it's not meant to be a text book, thankfully.
Watts also has bigger fish to fry than simply the importance of networks in everything under the sun. His real message is that social reality has to be understood both in terms of the way people are connected and also the way they behave. So focusing on individual behavior to the exclusion of their interactions misses half the story, but so does just focusing on the interactions (as much of network theory has done). It's true that many of the ideas are quite old (and Watts again is the first to point this out), but the way they are put together is new, and that is what is so interesting about it.
The results are often quite deep and thought provoking, which means you have to actually read the book to understand what's in it, but Watts always comes up with an entertaining anecdote or analogy to make even the hardest concepts palatable and interesting. Overall, it's a great, fun read about a fascinating subject that really makes you think. And what more can you ask from a book?

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Six Degrees of Separation Review

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(More customer reviews)Based on the true story of a wealthy, well-meaning liberal couple in the upper echelons of New York society's upper crust, we have Flan or Flanders Kittredge and his wife Ouisa or Louisa; the former is a standoffish but deep down good-hearted art dealer in the private sector who has a penchant for the works of Kandinsky and Cezanne; the latter is his wife, articulate and intelligent who is in need of something of greater meaning and depth other than money, art, fancy restaurants and wealthy friends.
And so the evening commences with a friend from South Africa; they are discussing poverty, the downtrodden and the oppressed, overblown intellectual banter to elevate the ego and make the evening progress smoothly and divinely. But the night is anything but that, for it is dramatically interrupted by Paul - a young black homosexual flimflammer or Peter Funk man with a penchant for male street hustlers (only when he is happy - his words). He comes into the lives of these two unwitting victims after stabbing and passing himself off as a friend to their children who are at Harvard. And what else does her profess? You guessed it - that he is the son of you-know-who: Academy Award winner Sidney Poitier, the most eminent black actor of his generation, the hero that has been the catalyst for the lives of these socially and politically 'aware' forty-somethings.
Paul charms and bedazzles himself into the lives of those he encounters, using his wit, knowledge, ease and most importantly, his race, more specifically, Sidney Poitier's name. As the play intensifies, Paul promises the Kittredge's and future unsuspecting victims minor roles in the movie version of Cats, for which his 'father' is purportedly directing. The victims salivate over the prospect of being in a Poitier film, and they let their guards down, for their humdrum existence now has that depth and meaning that was missing at the beginning of the play; it has that structure that their kids, their careers, their money and their friends could not provide. It has a purpose. An assumed black actor's son is mugged in Central Park. And the kind Kittredges help him out. When life is not all that we want it to be, it is easy to have the wool pulled over our eyes. We believe because we want to believe. That is the meat of this play.
This play is complex because of the issues that are addressed; it is not just about race and economics, but it is about the purpose of existance in life. This work evolves and reveals so many layers, layers that are eventually reached, and thus, a truer gift of insight gained. Ironically, in the environment of the wealthy elite and the established intelligentsia, it was a sharpie who made this couple and others similar to them see the gift that life and living really is.

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