The six-degrees human-web concept, first put forth in 1929 by Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy in a short story “Chain-Links,” theorizes that even as populated and far-flung as our planet is, everyone is at most six steps away from any other person. That is, anyone can be connected to any other person on earth through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries. Numerous mathematical exercises, experiments, and studies have attempted to collaborate this theory, some more convincingly than others.

Additionally, Karinthy’s original story has instigated countless follow-up writings on our “shrinking” modern world due to the ever-increasing connectedness of human beings. But the notion didn’t become significantly popular until 1990 when American playwright John Guare produced the Broadway hit Six Degrees of Separation. Made into a 1993 movie starring Stockard Channing, Will Smith, and Donald Sutherland, Guare’s play and film showed how expanding human networks and advances in travel have made modern-day social distances ever smaller.

With the Internet and get-in-touch services like Facebook and LinkedIn, it’s been suggested that, in the United States, only three to four degrees of separation exist between strangers. That means fewer than three intermediaries are needed to connect anyone with someone else.

Making Karinthy’s degrees-of-separation concept even more intriguing is how different time periods fit into the equation, coming into play to present innumerable possibilities.

Here’s an example. At the 2010 NASCC-AISC international conference in Orlando, I encountered one of my former employees from 25 years past. Walter Gerstle is now a prominent structural engineering professor at the University of New Mexico. We had just attended a presentation about ethics, so it gave us a chance to discuss ethical questions in both academia and the business world. In theory, they both share a central theme regarding right and wrong, but in practice things can be vastly different, we agreed.

Besides “talking shop,” this time together allowed us to catch up on life events and enjoy conversation such as “What ever happened to so-and-so? Did that last challenging project I worked on ever get built?”

Walter’s father Kurt Gerstle had been one of my favorite advanced structures professors in graduate school. He’s someone I have stayed in touch with at the University of Colorado at Boulder over the years. While in Munich, I had dinner with several leading European engineers and contractors at one of their homes overlooking a mountain lake in the Bavarian Alps. A longtime childhood friend of Kurt’s as well as his elderly father, a noted retired engineering professor, were also part of the group. The father effortlessly recalled several defining moments in Kurt’s career and also told stories of Walter as child.

Walter was amazed that his name had even come up in a dinner conversation at such a random encounter, thousands of miles from where he lived and practiced. It reminded me how small the world really is — and that there must, indeed, be something to this “six degrees of separation” proposition.

So how does knowing this help us better understand how we can impact the world around us? And will adhering to time-tested standards of ethics and engineering practice someday paint a favorable picture of us with others we have yet to encounter? It is certainly probable we will interact with many more people around the globe than previous generations ever did. It gives credence to the notion “what goes around comes around.”

Somewhere, someplace, sometime, how you treat others and your ethical standards will be the topic of conversation, perhaps even in remote, faraway places among people you don’t know. Or your engineering deeds, even if they seem ho-hum to you, could be the basis for inspiring others — some younger, some older, some engineers, and some non-engineers. Who knows — you may help them reach their highest level of greatness, when unbeknownst to you, your name comes up in conversation.

In addition to considering your potential impact on people on your path, think of all the international business possibilities this phenomenon presents. Most of them have likely not been studied yet, but they could actually bear your mark, given the six degrees (or fewer) of separation on our planet today.

Richard G. Weingardt, P.E., is CEO and chairman of Richard Weingardt Consultants, Inc., a Denver-based structural engineering firm. He can be reached via e-mail at rweingardt@gostructural.com.