Blue to Pink to Red to Violet to Light Green

I have a little thing that I do when I travel. It’s not exactly a ritual, not ever really planned, and mostly involves walking to some famous marker in a city, usually at night. I’ve walked to Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco at midnight just to watch the ocean, only to find that the pedestrian lanes close at sundown. I’ve walked through downtown D.C. and crossed the Potomac at night to sit at the Jefferson Memorial and watch the river pass by our illuminated Federal government. I’ve day walked two miles down an island in the middle of the Xiang River in Changsha, China to visit the school where Mao taught before he become a political icon.

The park dedicated to Mao at the end of the island wasn't worth the two mile walk.

Even when I was in my home state of Indiana, I often enjoyed trying to get lost in the back roads and highway system. I would pick a spot to find on a map, then navigate to the town or locale by my wits and internal compass. I saw it as a game, a way to take in the landscape and orientate myself with the world. By trying to get un-lost, which is different from being found, the process enabled me to harness the full extent of my senses in order to really take in the surroundings and find a recognizable landmark or feature, a real life guidepost.

I didn't know when I chose to find it, but Buddha, Indiana doesn't even have a stop sign.

It’s not that I am trying to dismiss maps at all, as I have mentioned in other posts I am a map-ophile. There is just a difference between owning a map and not getting lost. Just because someone has their GPS unit on doesn’t mean that either the machine isn’t going to give wrong directions--it happens often--or the person will not heed the instructions on how to navigate through the landscape correctly to reach their final destination. We still have to follow the map, not just have the map.

A perfect example of this is my history with the Berlin U-Bahn. The logo for this blog is taken from the map of this train system which connects east and west Berlin seamlessly with one coherent system of urban transportation. Before the wall came down in 1989, Berlin was two cities with two transit systems, and when the city as well as the country were reunified, so were the transit systems. Some lines were entirely East German lines and some were entirely West German lines, but the incorporation of the two into one coherent system is a testament to the way that the city has been reunited. Sure, some lines still had hard benches with fabric sewn cushions while others had new contoured plastic seats, but the trains were always on time and the system was extensive. But you still had to get yourself somewhere.

I first became acquainted with the U-Bahn during a trip to the city a few years ago. I was understandably lost when I arrived at the Hauptbaunhof (HB) in Berlin, or Main Train Station; I was in a city I had never been before, and was trying to get to a hostel in a foreign land, using a mode of transportation which I was certainly unfamiliar. I consulted a map, the map of the U-Bahn. Okay, that didn’t help much. So I asked for help.

I found the Help desk at the HB and, after asking if someone spoke English, asked for directions to Nollendorfplatz, priding myself on at least knowing the closest U-Bahn train stop. The young woman cheerfully replied, “Yes, you could take the line to Friedrichstrasse, then to Potsdamer Platz, then to Gleisdreick to Nollendorfplatz. Or you could take the Friedrichstrasse to Hallesches to Nollendorfplatz, or you could take the line to the Zoologischer Garten to Wittenbergplatz to Nollendorfplatz, or.......” Her voice trailed on and on as she gave me dozens of directions to one place, sometimes giving me multiple lines between two locations, all correct, and all asking me to move from one train line to another along the finely executed system of navigation through the city. I certainly wasn’t going to be lost with the brightly colored transit map in my hands, I just had to use it correctly.

I still had to find my way along the Blue then Pink then Red then Violet then Light Green lines.

It wasn’t as much trying to remember the color coding that accompanied the routes and became substitutes for the journey--blue to pink or green to red, or blue to purple to light green, or orange, purple or blue to red--as it was remembering the names of the places that would push me along my way. I had the map, I was explained that there are many ways to get there from here. The onus was now on me. I still had to take the information, the maps and the system for traveling, and use it correctly. I could take any number of color combinations to get where I wanted to go, the order was all in my hands. The map didn’t dictate my route, it merely gave me possibilities. I still had to find a way to make myself un-lost again, even though I had a map.

Weak Ties in a Small World

We all have them. An acquaintance met at a party from years ago, or a distant cousin who lives on the other side of the country. Maybe it’s the guy who I used to sit next to in high school history class, the one that I never saw after he moved away mid year. They’re the Facebook friends that we just can’t or don’t want to shake. Maybe they don’t post anything except the random cat video, or a passing comment that opposes your political beliefs. Or maybe they post incessantly, constantly blathering on about needing rides to a concert, or their job interviews, or just basic non sequitur that now serves as small talk. We don’t always engage them online, but for some reason we hesitate to block them as friends.

Just when you thought it was safe to delete all Facebook friends that you didn’t really know, it seems that this network of chance acquaintances may be the missing link in making diverse and essential connections online. Author Jill Walker Retterberg claims that sociologist Mark Granovetter’s theory of Weak Ties relates directly to these friend of a friends that get amassed through social network websites,1 and these are the connections that can be the most beneficial in disseminating information to the most diverse group of people.

Is it really important to keep close ties with all of these people? Scientists think so.

The Weak Ties theory says that we have strong ties to people and we have weak ties. Strong ties are the core group of friends that we all have, the social network and tight support circle. Everyone knows everyone intimately in this group, and the networking is rather homogenized among the members since everyone is so familiar with each other. Weak ties are the friends from outside the group that one member may know, and they belong to their own strong linked group of friends and support circle. These weak links connect two circles of people together who may have never known of each other, and a greater ability to network and make deeper connections happens. A classic example is the new kid in school that immediately becomes cool because he’s from outside the circle of friends and has different tastes in music and fashion.

Taken further, Granovetter takes the now famous “Six degrees of separation” theory, actually called “Small World” experiments by Stanley Milgram, and ties his weak link theories to them. The theory of six degrees of separation claims that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by only six connections, or degrees. It’s an amazing and quite beautiful thing to think about, that as large and diverse as this world is, with now over 7 billion people inhabiting it, and everyone is so very close to everyone else. But Granovetter noted that these studies were more likely to be successful if there was a weak tie between people being connected. The connections that allow for the most diverse and divergent areas of contrary examinations are the ones that come from just outside our comfort zones, they’re tangential but not necessarily a part of our tight social network.

"Everyone is a new door, opening to other worlds."

One of the social advantages of Facebook is that it allows for these tangential connections to filter a bit of their tastes, digital links, and networks into your own. I have Facebook friends that I’m not sure how I became connected to them, but I really enjoy the links to music videos that they post, and I’m sure that I am the same way to others. This ability to connect content as well as networks through Facebook is what essentially gives the site its flavor, the spice that is out of the ordinary social circle. Even if your cousin continues to invite you to all night raves in Portland, don’t delete him. His social circle, though it may be different in many ways from yours, is a connection to a world that may not be so foreign, and you may be surprised by how much you can learn by knowing someone that is just outside your circle of friends.



1 Blogging, Jill Walker Retterberg, 2008, p. 59