To borrow a saying from popular culture, “I was today years old” when I realized that the internet and the web do not hold the same meaning, yet I have been using them interchangeably…oops! I am happy to report that I now know that the internet refers to the physical infrastructure, while the web is the network of information (Nat and Friends, 2016). Reflecting on the web and how its success and efficiencies depend upon network connections makes me think of the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon Game”, which theorizes that every actor in Hollywood is connected to the actor Kevin Bacon through at least six degrees of separation.
Naturally, the actors that have been in movies with him have higher degrees of connectivity and know him personally, while those at the sixth degree may not even realize they are connected. A fun fact is that even someone like myself who is not a Hollywood actor is able to find connections that link me to Kevin Bacon, but the degree of connectivity is very weak. I think that it goes to show that connections can be extremely obvious, but also very obscure or unexpected – which brings me to the results of the Golden Record Curation.
It was interesting to see the visual of the entire class’ “Golden Record” selections and the network of connections using Palladio. I ended up in a facet group with three other students, and to analyze the connections, I attempted to make my own Adjacency Matrix, although I am not sure if I did it correctly. I colour coded blue for my connections, pink were the null connections, and orange for the connections of my facet members that I was not a part of. While I am not sure if I did this correctly, I felt that it helped me to analyze the connections. Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly), the student that I shared the most connections with in this activity also shares the same first name as me, Melissa D. Interestingly, our selection process was quite different, yet we had still managed to select six of the same songs, as Melissa D. focused more on her personal musical preferences (Drake, 2021). On the other hand, Sarah H. and I had quite a similar selection process as we both had focused on the diversity on Earth to be represented, and we had five selections that were the same (Hain, n.d.). Lyon T. and I only had three selections in common, but he had more connections in common with Melissa D. and Sarah H. Lyon T. and Melissa D. appear to have shared a more similar selection process as they focused more on their personal musical preferences (Drake, 2021; Tsang, 2021).
Palladio Facet
Adjacency Matrix
What is particularly interesting is that in total, there were actually only two songs that all four of us had selected: Johnny B. Goode and the Senegal Percussion.
Originally, I thought that maybe we all ended up in the same group because there was a high degree of connectivity with these two songs, but…if you look at the graph on Palladio with all the connections for the entire class, you can see that that overall, these two songs had a high degree of connectivity. Therefore, it seemed unlikely that we were all in the same group just because of these two songs…
Palladio: Johnny B. Goode and Senegal Percussion Connections
In fact, there were actually at least five other students that had selected both of these songs who were not in our facet (Erin M., Carlo T., Megan S., Rayneet S., and Manize N.)…curious. Therefore, it would appear that the algorithm put us all in the same facet because of the number of connections we had that were similar to one or more members of the group, and it is quite possible that the fact that we had six null choices in common factored into why we were not included in a different facet. However, this is ultimately how network connections work on the web. Web Pages may be linked in the algorithm not because they are identical, but because they share connections, or left out of the algorithm because of the absence of connections. It explains why when you search for something on the internet, the top of the list almost always contains the information you are looking for, but as you move down the list (or even go to the second page) you start to wonder what Google was thinking, as the connections become less obvious and significant. Yet, a simple change in wording in the search, or the use of a different search engine may yield different results or even those that are obscure or unexpected.
Oh, and for those who may be wondering about my connection to Kevin Bacon…here it is:
My paternal grandmother (1) grew up in Saskatchewan and was friends as a teenager with the Canadian actress Shirley Douglas (2) as their families had summer cottages at the same lake. Shirley Douglas is the mother of the actor Kiefer Sutherland (3) who was in the movie “A Few Good Men” with Kevin Bacon (4).
References
Drake, M. (2021, March 7). Task 8. UBC Blogs. blogs.ubc.ca/meldrake/2021/03/07/task-8
Hain, S. (n.d.). Task 8: Golden record curation. UBC Blogs. blogs.ubc.ca/shain/task-8-golden-record-curation
Nat and Friends. (2016, December 16). A journey to the bottom of the internet [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9R4tznCNB0
Tsang, L. (2021, March 6). Lyon’s golden picks from the golden record. UBC Blogs. blogs.ubc.ca/lyontsang