Send your experiences to connected@superconnect.org. We’d love to hear about your personal experience relating to the main themes of the book:

• small world and degrees of separation
• chance meetings and the strength of weak links
• the ease of reconnecting with the past
• superconnectors and the concentration of networks in society
• the coercive nature of hubs
• the effects of the internet on society, and the importance of face-to-face communication
• the network structure of ideas
• network phenomena in the business world, including market concentration
• poverty and networks
• the network society

———–

An eloquent post by Ayesha Tellis from Mumbai:

And so I casually mention to my uncle the crazy “glaring-like-a-neon-sign” realization of the simple twist of my faith and it so happens that a couple of days ago he stumbled upon, just like that, a book that speaks of the power of “networks” and the “strength of weak links” calledSuperconnect. My little tryst with destiny, I was told, is a fine example of how these work.

Authors Richard Koch & Greg Lockwood unfold the theory of networks and the significance of “weak links”.

Weak links essentially exist in everyones life, sometimes perceptively, discernibly and sometimes not. These are links we are barely aware of; a dilute stimulus in the making. Its presence is not heightened by our awareness of it or our attention towards it. These links are always in a state of relaxed alertness and pregnant with potential.

Knowing that “weak links” are a deliberate force that can be harnessed is a feat in its own right. Most people believe “what you see is what you get” and “what you need is what is catered to”, we lack edge consciousness. You only focus on what is in your direct line of view whereas the peripheral and edge perspective are being totally ignored. Evolution and destiny unfold from the edges, weak links are at the edge of our consciousness and hence can easily be missed undetected. But it’s the rare few people who pay attention to the weak links, the edges, and have the resolve to do something about it, riding the weak link per say.In essence you are energizing the weak link and a consequence of recognizing it’s existence without recognizing it’s identity.

“We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people’s lives.”

Robert M. Pirsig,

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

A weak link is often not accorded its due importance when it first shows up and the average human being cannot anticipate the use of this weak link till a situation arises where that once loosely encountered weak link can now prove valuable. And yet the weak link can be camouflaged in a new context and we wont know that it is that same weak link causing an effect.

• In the beginning there is lack of clarity, a sort of fuzziness.
• The first step is to wake up to the new intrusion in your mind-scape.
• The second step is suspecting the options to put a face to the identity of the intrusive phenomenon, a compensatory mechanism, you feel you have to respond / react to the new stimulus.
• At a tipping point you recognize the reality – the truth of the matter.
• Finally your reaction to the stimulus, a negative stimulus is seen as a threat and is followed by a reaction which is a consequence of instinct.
• The end result to this encounter can leave you victim or victor.

There is a scene in Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrences’ first encounter with Sherif Ali, that triggers a whole pile of fine example for weak links working alongside each other. Omar Sharif’s character, Sherif Ali plays the role of the weak link that gathers force and proves significant to a consequence which was unanticipated.

———–

———–

I’m reading your book, and I noticed the quote ” Maximize the serendipity around you” starting off chapter one.

English is a fantastic language. Swedish lacks a word directly corresponding to “serendipity”. That’s probably one reason my father always used a longer analogy to give me similar advice when I was growing up. He said: ”Son, most opportunities will occur as unexpectedly as slipping on a banana peel. So, whatever path you take in life, make sure it’s one with a lot of banana peels.”

M N, Stockholm

———–

So I’d read the book and thought it was probably a load of old twaddle – the sort of things you know you should do (i.e. network harder) but that you don’t change your life to do – well maybe you give it a week after finishing the book but then you lapse back into the same old ways.  Well, I was forced to think again last week when the weakest and most unlikely of weak link connections restored not the best of situations.

I was travelling to Monaco and the last flight from London to Nice is scheduled to land at about 1130pm from where it’s a 30 minute taxi ride into Monaco.  It’s a journey I do once a year and have never had a problem – eta at the hotel shortly after midnight.  This time however, due to torrential rain over southern France the plane was an hour late taking off from Heathrow and I arrived at Nice airport at half past midnight.  With hand luggage only I sped through the airport and was expecting to be one of the first in the taxi queue – but it was still raining heavily and the taxi queue stretched round the corner and not a taxi in sight.  As it turned out the rain had been so torrential that about ten people had lost their lives that evening in a flash flood not far from Nice, and the ACDC concert meant taxis were in short supply.  I had reached about 50th after ten minutes in the queue and just one taxi, rain still torrential, when a guy walked up the line asking if anyone was travelling to Monaco – I said yes and he asked whether we could share a ride to which I agreed, saving him 50 places in the queue and a certain half hour.  We eventually bundled into a taxi with one other guy – and, despite the hour engaged in small talk about what we were doing in Monaco, what we did for a living etc.  It turned out we had a finance guy (me), a solar panel guy and a cat bond guy (don’t ask, something to do with insuring risk).  A pleasant enough conversation despite the hour.  As we reached his drop off in Monaco I gave him my card and he told me his name – an Italian surname which rang a bell somewhere in the deepest recesses of my brain.  I asked him if he had been to school in England to which he said yes so I asked him which one – a long shot you might think given we are talking school in the early 80s but the name sounded vaguely familiar.  Well, you guessed it, we had attended the same school in the early 80s in Oxford – in fact it wasn’t him I had overlapped with but his younger brother.  I thanked him for saving me a certain two hours in the taxi queue (being Italian he hadn’t exactly stuck rigidly to the queuing system but I’m not complaining) and I was safely in my hotel by 2am – it could have been a lot worse.

And I had one this weekend as well – Brit living in LA, runs a media business, has VC backers in the UK – and the guy who sits on his board from the VC was a work colleague ten years ago.  I’m definitely a buyer of the small world theory.

Maybe they’d always been happening and I just didn’t think about them until Superconnect gave what I had previously thought were chance encounters some form of framework, or maybe I’ve drunk the potion and am now converted.

I had an amazing experience the other day. At the Hay-on-Wye festival, I was waiting for a table with one of my authors – one of many ‘couples’ waiting for a table that had been booked – when a kind woman and her husband suggested we share their four person table. Assuming we could have two 2-way conversations, we gleefully accepted. However the table was tiny and it was impossible not to spend the entire evening talking to them. We had a great time. Cultural gluttons, they come to Hay every year for a literary bonanza, leaving their four children at home. It’s their annual treat. We talked about writers, books, the fun of a weekend away without the kids etc. In fact, we were having such a good time that we didn’t touch on the boring stuff like ‘where do you live? etc.’

A couple of weeks later, I received an email from this woman. She had bought my client’s most recent novel and was reading the acknowledgements and saw my name and that of my father who had helped with research. It turns out that this ‘stranger’ lives in the village I was born in. In fact we went to the same nursery, our mothers shared a school run, she had a crush on my brother and I used to have weekly riding lessons with her sister. She even remembered my parents’ twin Afghan coats.

It’s a small world!

Caroline Wood, Oxford

———–