The 6 degree field

Here's a problem i've been thinking of lately.... But not yet thought of how to hit the solution...

First.... Here's what started me off on this. I have learnt under Prof. Lokanathan and he had learnt under Hans Bethe. So that makes me Hans Bethe's grand student! (Well, as Feynman was Bethe's studednt too, that makes Feynman my uncle!) And this linkage has sort of impacted what i am now.

If we look at this in general, many people are what they are largely due to what their social environment is. So, I wanted to figure out the impact of the social environment on say, a person's career. Using the notion that everybody on earth is just 6 links away from anyone else, i thought i'd call it the 6 degree field...... A field of people's influences.... And since these people are also born int oa field of influences, this goes on and on further. I have heard some stuff abt buzzword marketing (The anatomy of Buzz -Emanuel Rosen), where they look at density of nodes, in the 6-deg network to figure out the best ppl to advertise to...... My requirements seems to look pretty different.

So, this seems like an awfully complicated, unsolvable system, even after stripping it down to this. I wish to consider simplistic, few-people-models and then sey how it becomes turbulent as u add complexities and prople to it. The solution defintely has to be chaotic, or else the world would be a dull n boring place! But, i want to see if there is some sort of predictability. (Well real life is pretty predictable in bangallore at least! Almost everyone becomes a doctor, engineer or a call centre employee!)

Few things that i have thought should go in to the model:
- Relationships have weights. I'll be more influenced by my bro than Lokanathan. In general, different relatioinships have different strengths. A random distribution of these relation weights may be the right thing.
- relations can have negative weights. As in u don't want to do anything that is forced on you, or something your rival is doing
- The field changes with time. The weight of a relationship might change with time, but some effects of previous contact will remain, as a function of ur peak relationship strength
- People have life times,
- Two relations may either constructively or destructively interfere, or may parallelly affect without any antagonistic effects. (E.g. I can be an amateur marathoner and a researcher simultaneously)

And i'll keep on adding and modyfying this list before i start trying to attempt a solution/simulation.

Any comments/suggestions are welcome

Disclaimer: Of course, this asssumes that there is no Divine intervention that alters life. Anyway, all people who believe that such a thing can happen, probably wouldn't read this far either!