Frigyes Karinthy and the Six Degrees

Hungarians have come up with so many inventions and ideas, from the atomic bomb to the ball point pen, that it would be difficult to list here. Nobody in these parts is surprised when it’s revealed a Hungarian had a hand in the latest technology, from the covid vaccine to the Excel spreadsheet on Windows. But every now and again, even we are shocked to discover certain local ingenuity that has made its way into the big world.

Take for instance the one-time viral game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.’ Without the inventive imagination of a long-dead Hungarian writer, this game, not to mention Will Smith’s first movie roll (we’ll get to that) would not exist.

That’s because the concept of ‘six degree of separation’ by which it is posited everyone on the planet is only separated from each other by six other people, or as Wikipedia explains it: Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of "friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps — was conceived of by a Hungarian.

The writer in question was ‘Golden Age’ novelist Frigyes Karinthy. He likely came up with the idea in a grand Budapest coffeehouse as a parlour game. He wrote it down in a short story, but it was poplarized only later, in John Guare’s Broadway play Six Degrees of Separation. In the words of his character Ouisa: “I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it A) extremely comforting that we're so close, and B) like Chinese water torture that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection... I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.”

And observant fans of film will remember that the silver-screen version of Six Degrees starred a young actor named Will Smith, in what was his first roll.

Karinthy didn’t live to see the popularity of his concept, but you can read about it in his short story “The Chain” or “Chain Links” as it is sometimes translated. He died in 1938. But not before writing a short story called “Voyage to Faremido,” which was a meditation of the concept of AI. To be sure, this was almost 100 years ago, so to say he was ahead of his time would be an understatement.

These’s no available clip of the ‘Six degrees’ monologe delivered in the film, but we will still treat you to a wonderful scene starring Will Smith while we wonder just how many degrees he is from us right now.

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