Shrinking World Concepts

Shrinking world concepts are a central, if not defining, element of contemporary globalization discourse. They refer to the widely accepted notion that recent technological developments have produced transformative changes in the objective and perceived social qualities of physical space. Although different authors emphasize different aspects of this transformation, the common underlying assumption is that, due to major advances in computer-based long-distance communication and transportation systems since the 1980s, geographical distances between the globe's individuals have lost, to an increasing extent, their social relevance.

In the social sciences, the alleged “shrinking” of the social world has been described in a broad variety of terms: as a “compression” of time and space (Harvey); a move toward a situation of increased global interdependence, in which decisions made in one place affect people living several thousand miles away (Giddens); or even a significant step toward the “end of geography.” Network theorists point to the growth in density, geographical reach, and social importance of cross-border social ties, which is assumed to have made a “small world” (Watts) grow even smaller.

Outside of the academic sphere, probably the most fervent advocate of the shrinking world concept is the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who claims that the (social) world is moving “from being small to tiny.” In Friedman's view, “Several technological and political forces have converged, and [Page 1540]that has produced a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance—or soon, even language” (quoted in Pink, 2005, para. 8).

While increasingly popular, the notion of a small world growing smaller is not new. As Duncan J. Watts has pointed out, the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy speculated as early as 1929 that anyone in the world was connected to anyone else through a chain of no more than five intermediaries. In the late 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram devised an experiment to test the hypothesis. He found that the average degree of separation between various individuals in Boston and Omaha and a target person in Massachusetts was about six. Since the publication of John Guare's play Six Degrees of Separation in 1999, the small world concept has become a cultural phenomenon, with various party games and websites dedicated to the topic. It is commonly assumed that in the present era of the Internet and mass traveling, chains of just a handful of intermediaries connect not only North Americans but people all over the world.

It is important to note, however, that in the social sciences, shrinking world concepts remain contested. As several critics have emphasized, catchphrases such as the “end of geography” fail to reflect that the production and distribution of computer-based technologies have been embedded in social relations characterized by large disparities in power and income. Current discussions of the “digital divide” make it clear that, in many macro regions, the degree of transnational connectedness is low and the hinterlands of these regions remain nearly impossible to reach. As a consequence, the extent to which technological advances have contributed to the shrinking of perceived geographical distances is subject to substantial variation across both regions and social classes. The notion of a small world, with individuals connected by no more than five intermediaries, may well hold for North Americans, or for frequent Internet users in other industrialized regions, but not for the inhabitants of developing countries.

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