The sociology department at Columbia University, home of Duncan Watts, social networks researcher and author of Six Degrees, has launched a project to update the findings of Stanley Milgram’s initial project that resulted in the “six degrees of separation” path length. They are inviting anyone who would like to participate to sign up at the Smallword project web site. I’ve just signed up and received my assignment.

The assignment is to try to get an email to a person (totally unknown to me in another part of the world) through an email chain, by sending it to someone I know who I think might be able to find someone to get the email closer. (There are many descriptions of the project, but a nicely contexted one is in Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article, Six Degrees of Lois Weinberg.)

I’ll let you know how it goes.