Wasn’t completely sure that I was remembering the right Name’s number, so I Googled before voting. Like many others, I’d have been able to give a quicker answer if the question had been “do you know what the monkeysphere is?”
Not that I remembered the actual number, but if I’d guessed, it would have been within an order of magnitude. Monkeysphere just sticks in the mind in a way that Name’s number doesn’t.
I’d listen to a talk about it.
I knew something more-or-less evolution associated that Colibri didn’t? high-fives self ** looks around sheepishly**
Dunbar is the name of the “armored car” company that picks up our deposits where I work. I do not know there number.
Shouldn’t you explain what you are asking?
I voted no, but, technically, I’m just unaware of the term, not the concept. Cracked.com popularized it as your monkeysphere, and miscommunicated it a bit. (It’s not that you only care about 150 people, but that you can’t process an actual relationship with more than that. You can care at a deep level about people not in your monkeysphere.)
EDIT: I see other’s beat me to the punch. But I’m leaving it.
I voted no. But as others have said, I am familiar with the concept under a different name.
Yes, although I had to think for a minute.
No. Dunbar’s number is tied to human cognitive capability, and as such, it’s going to take some serious evolution for it to change significantly. If you really dig into what’s happening on a site like Facebook, you see that while people have a lot of contacts, they only interact with a very small number of them on a regular basis.
I had just listen to a podcast about it a few weeks ago, otherwise I wouldn’t have known
Ditto and ditto to knowing the concept but not recognizing the name. Probably first encountered the concept in one of the books by Malcolm Gladwell.
I thought it might be the area phone dialling code for Dunbar in East Lothian, Scotland, about 30 miles from where I am sitting in Edinburgh.
But that turns out to be 01368.
Right, now I have looked it up I had heard of the concept before but not with that term applied to it.
I have always known it in the context that throughout military history, the smallest military unit has always been around this number - equivalent to a modern infantry company.
I voted “no”, but upon looking it up in Wikipedia, I realized that I had heard the term before, when I read The Tipping Point.
Nope. This is new to me.
Although I will bet I’m below the norm, as I don’t Facebook.
If you look in the phone book for any major city, you can find the number of quite a few Dunbars.
Which, if you multiply the digits 136*8 gives you 144, the number closest to 150 with an integer square root!
Coincidence? You be the judge.
I’d never heard of it, although I see it was coined by Robin Dunbar, author of “The Trouble with Science”, which I own, and formerly of Liverpool University, my Alma mater.
Upon Wikiing Dunbar’s Number, I find I am fairly familiar with the concept (and the fact that it is supposedly about 150), but I did not know it by that name.
Yes, but I was an anthropology major.
I’d never heard of it–neither by name, nor the concept.
My precognitive powers are sensing several hours about to vanish down the google/wikipedia hole.
So, how’d the talk go, athelas? Or didn’t you give it yet?
Ha, and just today, the arXiv blog features an article about Dunbar’s number in the light of modern social networking, especially wrt Twitter. Though the conclusion is not really all that much of a shocker…