some cog sci folk have theories of "chunking" when it come to cognitive limits. There are many similar studies based on the "people can only remember 7 things at once" studies of George Miller in the 1950s, and the "chunking" theories suggest that if those seven things can be conveniently grouped under one heading, such as "people I work with" then it can be reduced to 1 member of a higher order group of 7 things. This is a convenient theory to account for how people can have 7000 contacts and still "know" who they are in some meaningful sense.
But I second Bernard's question: what constitutes the "social" in a social network? What work is that modifier doing? I spent Fall semester asking my students 'what's social about "social software"?' and the answer was essentially that "social" was an unsubstantiated synonym for "better than other kinds of software"... ck On Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 06:29:53PM +0530, Bharath Chari wrote: > At 06:08 PM 12/11/2005, Mahesh Murthy wrote: > > >A significant number of people, yours truly among them, have active > >networks > >that span 5 to 10 times that number of people. My own Outlook contacts list > >has more than 7,000 people on it, for instance - and it's far smaller then > >that of several other people I know. > > I am quite sure that I have a network well below the 150 mark. I have > around 300 numbers on my phone but am clueless as to who most of the people > are. Actually, I think I have had interesting conversations with less than > 20 people over the past year. Not complaining one bit. > > And since I mostly reply to mail, I don't even have an address book, other > than what is automagically generated by some mail clients, and what's in my > head. > > Out of curiosity, how many of those 7000 have you actually contacted in the > past year, in a non-business context? And had meaningful "social > interaction"? > > Bharath > > >
