Can you imagine an Aussie backpacker falling into a similar bureaucratic black hole for that offence? The world can be terribly unfair, marred by our differences and divisions. When alien worlds collide, more than likely random relationships made by superconnectors will cross the divide.
Lois and Eleanor both connect across different worlds–Lois across almost every sub-culture in Chicago, and Eleanor across countries and social groups. Of course, there are some differences between the two women. Lois knows or knew a lot of famous people from wildly different walks of life: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein–the Big Three science-fiction writers of their time; legendary jazz musicians Art Farmer, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie; comedian Lenny Bruce, who once lived in her house; as did Nichelle Nichols, a singer and dancer who became famous as Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek; novelist Ralph Ellison; and, of course, the Mayor of Chicago, whoever that may be at the time. Eleanor knows no celebrities, and doesn’t particularly want to. Lois is quite renowned; Eleanor is obscure. Lois knows more people in far more diverse worlds than Eleanor, and has worked for a very long time in jobs that both require and enable a wide range of acquaintances.
Yet, the quality of Eleanor’s individual connections and the value of the bridges to the people she connects–such as Levi Thomas–are absolutely of the same stature as the connections made by celebrated figures such as Lois or Paul Erdös. Eleanor is not a premier league superconnector but, as an octogenarian grandma, she still participates in powerful and useful acts of linkage that bring some of the same benefits to individuals and society. Without Eleanor, the worlds of Ontario and Bogles in the West Indies would be much less connected. Without Eleanor, Levi might still be incarcerated. In her own modest way, she has reduced the degrees of separation in the world.
As we know, it was Stanley Milgram’s experiment that led to the idea of the ‘sociometric star’, which we have transmuted into the superconnector. And who was Exhibit A for Milgram, the star who slashed the degrees of separation between Nebraska and Boston? Was it someone famous, like Lois? No, it was a clothes merchant in Sharon, known by nobody outside the suburb but by everyone inside it. Mr Jacobs is clearly more in Eleanor’s league than Lois’s. Yet, the main difference between Jacobs and Eleanor, on the one hand, and Lois, on the other, is simply the scale of the canvas on which they operate. With a bit of poetic licence, Jacobs is to Sharon, and Eleanor is to Bogles, what Lois is to Chicago.
Lois and Paul Erdös represent such a high and virtually unattainable degree of superconnection to most of us that they are almost intimidating as models. When we think of superconnectors or superb networkers, we may visualise prominent people with thousands of live contacts who have the inclination and opportunity to spend their whole lives networking. However, this is wrong. Certainly, Lois and Paul are superconnectors, but the typical superconnector is someone much more like Eleanor or Jacobs or Andreas Meyer or Peter Harding. These are relatively humble folk who can connect because they have placed themselves at the centre of a social system, even a little-known or newly concocted one, or because they intrude into two or three systems that would otherwise be isolated from one another. The illustrations of ordinary superconnectors should give us pause and hope. Perhaps on some level this world is open to us as well; perhaps we are already very close to being a superconnector but have not realised the value of our role.
So what is a superconnector? And what does it take to be one? Clearly, it’s essential to have a large number of friendly acquaintances, probably hundreds. The vast majority of these will be weak rather than strong links, which rations the amount of time available to cultivate and feed each contact. Paradoxically, though, the lack of time dictates a reasonably high level of trust and cordiality between the contacts: like a cactus that can live on limited and infrequent watering, the relationship has to survive on rare meetings, so it must be good from the outset. Contacts from past lives, where there might have been frequent contact and the ability to assess each other’s character, may be fertile ground. Or you may just have met someone and instantly develop a mutual amity and trust. Some people, such as Lois, appear to be virtuosos at making friends on the hop. For the rest of us, it’s helpful to realise that friendly acquaintanceship is a skill that improves with practice. Keeping contact details is a good start.
It’s also necessary to know many people who are not well connected, at least in your circles. Some of this is intuitive and a matter of personality–curiosity, the willingness to meet disparate people, or building your life around a passion, like Peter or Andreas, which automatically requires connection or puts you in the middle of a spider’s web. And it may be possible systematically to increase the number and diversity of one’s contacts. Figure out how to find new characters to whom you are drawn, and talk for a few minutes. Be self-aware–appear open and approachable. A really good way is to change jobs or roles, or move house, every few years, especially if the jobs or residences are remote from each other.
A final superconnector characteristic is obvious but neglected–the willingness to act, to go ahead and connect people, when there is no ulterior motive or potential gain. The biggest network in the world is worthless if it is never used. The United States’ Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is connected to more than a hundred million people. Information and hard-earned money pour into it all the time, and tax demands flow out relentlessly. Yet, the IRS is not a superconnector because it does not connect a single user with any other user. Traditional television is similar. As is a bestselling book. They are connected to millions, but they do not connect.
The same is true of some people. In theory, they have fantastic networks: they may have known hundreds or even thousands of people, and got on well with them, throughout their lives. But if they do not take the trouble to connect these contacts, they are no more use in this regard than television or the tax man. In researching this book, one veritable old saying keeps cropping up–what goes around comes around. People who connect one contact to another get contacted in return–albeit probably not immediately, and sometimes by a very convoluted and asymmetrical route. I may connect A and Z, who then connect their contacts AB and ZY, who then link up ABD and ZYW…and then, eventually, one of these derived and untraceable contacts comes back to me when I need it most. It works by reputation, too. Anyone who is known to connect people attracts other contacts; there is less fear of rejection or awkwardness. However it works, though, it works on a grand scale. As we’ve seen, the universe is one great connection machine, ramshackle and random, but highly effective. And the fuel that keeps connections racking up and ricocheting around is reciprocity.
Few of us use anywhere near our connecting potential, even with our existing networks. The value in our networks is latent; the value to us and our contacts increases enormously when we connect people. One of the great connectors we spoke to said that every time she meets a contact, she asks what kind of people they would like to meet. Then she finds one potentially relevant person and makes the introduction.
Interestingly, many of the superconnectors we interviewed for this book turned out to be rather diffident or self-effacing, far from the popular image of extrovert, dominant, magnetic networkers. Malcolm Gladwell describes Lois at a reception in Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art as looking ‘a bit lost’: ‘She can be a little shy sometimes, and at first stayed on the fringes of the room, standing back, observing.’ Nor, he says, is she charismatic in a conventional way. ‘She doesn’t fill a room,’ he says, ‘eyes don’t swivel toward her as she makes her entrance.’ This is reassuring and endearing for those of us who are also sometimes ill at ease in a big group. You don’t have to be a party animal to connect successfully. Lots of us, deep down, hate parties, because the connections made at them are often forced and shallow, without the context and background of friendly acquaintanceship. Valued links come from natural connections, affinities that may surprise us but have some basis in common interests or the pull of personality, where we don’t have to talk about trivial things or feel under any obligation to connect.