I may not be a Number! But I'm still prisoner to -- The village

Fast Company | I Am Not a Number! by Scott Allen

With my dive into blogging, I'm rushing into the fully established world online "social" networking.

However, before I had my own crysalis transforming me into the "social" butterfly I am now, I was a solo, slow-to-go caterpillar who believed with my 100-legs I could do it all by myself.

When I learned of the socilogical "Village Theory" I became even more sure of myself. After all, there is limited capacity to form relationships, I figured I'd save them all until I had made it.

Village Theory simply suggest no matter how many millions of people you meet in your life, you're only going to be able to have a friendship with a very small number who are going to be truly significant in your life.

With the Villiage Theory, there's a strong and weak hypothesis.

Some say this fundamental limit is fixed over all time (you only get 150 friends, and 1 best friend ever in your whole life). Others take a weaker stance. They suggest there's a functional limit; however, different people at different times can "chunk" or "replace" previously used or placed positions. (You can only manage 150 friends at one time; however, 1 of those friends could be the members of your church and another can leave and be replaced by a new 'friend'.)

While many people immediately reject the theory out of humanocentric egotism, I do not. Because of my experience with things like Heisenberg Uncertainty Theorum and Godel's Incompleteness Theorum, I in fact tend toward the strict theory.

J.G. Ballard spoke of it saying:

The number of exhilarating, important experiences is limited. There¹s that school of anthropologists who have come up with the "Village Theory." They found that everybody had basically the same pattern . . . you had, say, two powerful sexual partners who transcended all the others. You fell in love once, there was one member of your family you really loved, etc. In your life you¹re going to meet two adult friends whom you're going to be really close to--if you've had them, you¹ve had them--the slots are filled in the brain, because the brain has a certain finite capacity for friendship . . . And if you have too much experience, you exhaust your capacity for further experiences. [RE/Search #8/9, 1984]

Agatha Christie's Miss Marple exemplifies the weak "Village Theory" postion, when she profiles every person based as an archetypal figure from her village of St. Mary Meade.

The article link above spoke of it saying

According to Robin Dunbar's research, as popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Duncan Watts' Six Degrees , the human brain is only capable of handling about 150 close social relationships. That's approximately the number of people for whom we can remember their name, their face, where we met them, our last conversation with them, and other details. As Dunbar put it, "It's the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar." For most professionals, a network of a mere 150 direct contacts, including friends and family, would be woefully insufficient to support you in achieving your business goals. But our brains simply can't handle more than that.

I ponder fundamental limits elsewhere. Key questions are: Is progress real? Is it infinate? Can our ability (or inability) to interact with innumerable others destine us to wars?

And as it relates here.

How does the catapillar give up dependence upon it's 100 legs to one day reach new highs as a butterfly? How does a business function when it necessarily has more relationships.

Right now I'm in a very exclusive networking community of 101 members.

Even in this group this small a system of management and middle management is forming.

I've observed, over time, and it is part of the Villiage Theory, that groups above 5 members will faction and splinter. Interestingly, the managment modle used in this group focused on that limit.

Two members act much like an old fashioned operator who would connect the wires acting as a conduit to complete the call. They are responsible to ensure clear flow of communication with 5 team leaders. Each team leader (there are 10) is repsonsible for a group of 10 (9 other) members.

The two, "Hello Operator" members ensure the messages are made clear, concise and delivered to the five key personalities who deliver on the promises of the organization.

I don't know where it's headed. However, I will have a blog post soon about using an online service I was able to exploit in this process.

While tihs post may offer more questions than answers. It comes at the right time.

The holiday season is upon us and many of us will in rooms full of our relations. And maybe, for a moment, we'll be thankful there can be only one like Uncle Harry.