Fitting Our Tools To A Small World

For today's reading we were assigned Chapter 9 Fitting Our Tools To A Small World by Clay Shirky’s in his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Shirky talks about random encounters such as sitting next to someone on an airplane, and realizing that you have a friend or acquaintance in common. This happens very often and the typical response is "Wow, what a small world!" Contrary to popular belief it isn't really that small of a world, rather the fact that we are all connected through people we know in common, or social networking.

Duncan Watts and Steve Strogatz have a pattern that they call the "Small World Network." One of the explanations Shirky gives is that there are small groups that we are all a part of. In that group there are people who are also a part of another small group. This allows the connection of several small groups to make a much larger network.

Something in the chapter I thought was interesting was that job openings, songs and gossip that was of interest or importance to a particular group would be more likely to get to you. If ones friends weren't interested in a certain new song, or a particular job opening then it wouldn't be likely to find out about them. Looking back at the chapter, it makes sense that it's not really just a small world. The choices that we make in life such as; where to work or live connect us in a way that we don't think about on a daily basis. But these choices connect us to others who also choose to live the same way we do and therefore give us those connections to one another.


Shirky, Clay (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations (chapter 9). New York: Penguin.