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“Linknotize” the Game of Network Navigation

Linknotize is a new game that came out earlier this year that focuses on your ability to navigate the Web. It challenges you to connect one unrelated topic to another as quickly, and in as few links as possible through websites, like Wikipedia, filled with hyperlinks. A player would start off on the page of one topic, such as that of Abraham Lincoln and have to navigate the links on each page in order to reach the page of Lady Gaga. The cards tend to differ immensely, creating quite a challenge, but through your knowledge of the World Wide Web it should seem clear how possible and easy completing these tasks should be and are.

As we’ve learned in class, the World Wide Web is one of the largest and most complex information networks available to us. Most webpages share hyperlinks between each other, incorporating the network features of the World Wide Web itself. This allows a user to navigate through pages by following their connections, similar to their ability to navigate through networks of people. In this sense, Milgram’s “Six Degrees of Separation” may not be completely applicable but the concept certainly is. In Milgram’s experiment he sent out packets requesting that the recipients mail it to someone in the hopes of eventually reaching a specific person. Through this he could tell how many links it took in order to identify a connection between the first person and the target person. The difference between the web and humanity, however, lies in its size and complexity and it has commonly been said that there are “19 clicks of separation”.  Whether this is true or not, it seems clear that navigating both humanity’s network and the World Wide Web are similar.

In the sense of the Linknotize game, it tests your ability to limit those links and showcases a similar application to Milgram’s experiment, only instead of letters it’s through the Web. In the case of Linknotize, since you’re using topics instead of specific pages or contacting a specific person they give you a maximum of ten clicks. Assuming that none of the combinations the game could provide would be unsolvable this gives Wikipedia, in theory, at most ten degrees of separation, though I can almost guarantee there to be less. The game itself really would be an interesting way to test these theories of degrees of separation, almost like a modern-day, simpler, and fun version of Milgram’s experiment. For those unfamiliar with those studies it will just show them the true interconnectedness of the world and particularly the World Wide Web.  It’s a game that deals with the interconnectedness we use every time we turn on our computers or smart phones.

 

Link: http://www.linknotize.com/

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