Small worlds everywhere

These images are from a museum in Lyon, France. It is called Musée des Miniatures et Décors du cinéma, which translated would give something like the museum of cinema decorations and very small objects (if you have a better translation please put a comment :))
I was impressed by this form of art, seeking perfection in the smallest detail. I think in research we must do the same thing: we must make sure that our models are perfect, that they are verified from all aspects.
While looking at these small objects, my mind goes to the small world effect in social networks...you are connected to anybody in the world by only 6 connections...for more details you can check out the book of Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, called Linked. This effect is also called "six degrees of separation".

The small world question is still a popular research topic today, with many experiments still being conducted. For instance, the Small World Project at Columbia University conducted an email-based version of the same experiment, and found average path lengths of about five on a worldwide scale. A similar experiment using popular social networking sites as a median was carried out at Carnegie Mellon University. Results showed that very few messages actually reached their destination. However, the critiques that apply to Milgram's experiment largely apply also to this current research.

Also, experiments show that any two web pages can be connected by 19 links.

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's book on the theory of networks shows that networks (social network of friends, the web's five billion websites, the biological food chain, business and commerce, the growth of cities, intra-cellular proteins, and so on) can be quantified and described with the same type of mathematical laws. These different types of networks share the same properties. By understanding how networks function and grow, one can develop strategies to take advantage of that growth.