Article for Almanac

Connection is “a relationship in which a person or thing is linked or associated with something else. ” If we consider though the more technological meaning, a connection is the set of operations and preliminary information exchanges required to establish a channel of communication between distributed systems or computing resources. An essential element to enable a connection is the protocol: an agreed set of rules the systems involved in the communication need to comply and use. But what this technical definitions of connection have enabled to a more broader sense of the meaning of “connection”? How people consider to be connected in everyday life? Internet, Radio, Television, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Mobile Phones and many more modern instruments, all use the “technical ” definition of connection to work properly, but at the same time are essential enablers of “human connectivity”. As a famous advertisement of a mobile phone producer proclaimed/promised “connecting people”, this is the final aim of the technological connectivity. Already in the late 60s sociologists started to investigate how people were connected with each other and how close in terms of chain of acquaintances two random people were. The results of the experiments of Stanley Milgram have brought to the famous saying “6 degree of separation ” that is people on the world are on average connected by a chain of acquaintances composed of just 6 people