Mar
8
A sociologist once explained to me that friendship and community have natural ‘limitations’ relating to scale. Due to both the natural capacity of human beings and pure mathematical implications of the increased complexity of our lives by adding even say just one person to a few close friends or relations.
If I remember correctly the approximate boundaries were: family intimacy – two to six; group – maximum of 12, and community or village – up to 120. While you can’t apply it as a strict formula, I’ve often found it a helpful guide.
For example, when doing multi-disciplinary design workshops I try to limit participants to 12. Beyond that number the natural pressure to form sub-groups increases dramatically and the coherence of the meeting starts to degrade.
The next step up is around 120 people. This is the realm of ‘village’ or ‘community’, where you could class those people as close acquaintances. That means know their face, remember their name and have made some kind of connection or conversation with them. Beyond 120 it is hard to keep up even this level of relationship, again simply because of the limitations of our memory, time and attention.
Recently the research emerged again in an article in the Economist, this time being applied to online social networks. They even quote the 120 figure - saying that on Facebook members with more friends than this are just ‘broadcasting’ themselves.
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