Degrees Of Familiarity
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 8, 2000
We're all neighbours in the global village of cyberspace, writes Claire O'Rourke.
A young cancer victim is still receiving postcards from well-wishers years after being in remission; Miller Brewing issues a press release pointing out an e-mail promising free beer is a hoax (and still the original e-mail arrives in my inbox six months after the statement); and a Turkish man identified only as "Mahir" gets more than a million visitors in a single week to his amateurish and unintentionally hilarious site after tickling the Web's collective funnybone.
There's something strange going on here.
It is a phenomenon those familiar with the ways of the Web know well - often because they have been the victim of, unwitting vehicle for or even perpetrator of these sometimes irritating examples of pure chance online.
Dubbed "six degrees of separation", this coincidental concept is based on the presumption that every person on the planet is connected through just six people. The concept was immortalised in a 1993 film of the same name in which one freak occurrence after another points to the underlying links between everyone.
On the Web, six degrees manifested itself in a game centred around Kevin Bacon, the theory being that every actor can be linked to Bacon by way of no more than six other actors, one of whom starred in a movie with Bacon.
The Dept of Computing Science "Oracle" at America's University of Virginia hosts the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon as well as games plotting actors within six degrees of Elvis Presley and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
This eerie six-degrees sensation becomes familiar once you are a regular e-mail user.
Why do our inboxes fill up with that same joke, petition or so-called freebie again and again and, strangely enough, again? I decided to find out.
Under the guise of research, I sent an e-mail to everyone in my address book asking the recipient to forward the message and, every so often, report on its progress.
I'm sure if it had been a hilarious joke or an appeal for a worthy cause it would have been been forwarded more readily, but many of my friends, whom I now label e-mail purists, refused to send it on.
Despite the rejections from some of my nearest and dearest (I even received an indignant "flame" from a friend of a friend), I also received a few sympathetic notes ("Sure as hell hope this is not a prank") and even some theories on why the intensity is building in e-mail chains.
One person commented on the increasing frequency and speed of e-mail circulation, saying: "I think it's quite amazing how tiny the world is starting to seem." Another divulged a theory which involved a complex formula involving "Net newbies" and the incorrect use of address books, which is too heavy and brain-numbing to reveal here. Overall, the response was quite startling - I had no idea people considered this phenomenon with such passion.
Chris Chesher, lecturer in media and communications at UNSW, conducted a classroom-based experiment where first-year students created Web pages and hyperlinks - whether real or imagined - to create a chain. By more than coincidence, the project was called Six Degrees of Separation.
"The result was 150 Web pages that created an interweaving set of stories and images about real and imaginary connections among the students in the group," Chesher says.
Oh, did I mention how I came across Chesher? After typing a very simple search query into www.anzwers.com.au I got almost every member of this project - in fact, they completely swamped the results. When scanning the page for the mastermind behind it I saw his name and ... well, as it happens, I sat in a couple of his classes at uni, he also taught a friend of mine and, to top it off, he was at a party I was at the Saturday before. Too, too weird.
As for e-mail, Chesher says the medium, like the Web, is compulsively creating connections but, unlike the Web, "you inflict it on other people".
"I think there is a six degrees rule on e-mail," he says. "Everyone is connected only by six jumps from anyone else. I'm convinced of this with the number of virus hoaxes I get from well-meaning friends."
The e-mail itself becomes the virus, which doesn't harass the computer system but just harasses the frustrated, spam-weary e-mail user.
The viral nature of e-mail is being capitalised upon by companies using an incentive to make the most of our real and online friendships and connections.
Rocket8.com, a new auction site, claims its "viral marketing" technique has generated more than 130,000 members in a few months. The way it works is simple: send e-mail and receive points you can use in auctions if your friends sign up. It took off with an epidemic rush.
The person who sent it to me boasted: "It took a whole 11 minutes before I received this
e-mail for the second time!"
But the six-degrees phenomenon can also be used for much more altruistic purposes. The Hunger Site was dreamed up by John Breen, a
42-year-old computer programmer from Indiana. The site works with the United Nations World Food Program to feed hungry people. Visitors simply click on the "Donate Free Food" button and the food is given by site sponsors.
I have been clicking on the site for months after I got an e-mail from a well-meaning friend. But I have received e-mails about the site again and again, making it the biggest repeat e-mail I received in 1999.
Breen denies this is another case of viral marketing. "The Hunger Site has nothing to do with all the e-mail. It's all just people completely unconnected with us doing it on their own initiative," he says. "Pretty good people!"
Forget those six degrees of separation. Thanks to the Net there are only about two or three.
University of Virginia Oracle
www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle
Six Degrees of Separation
http://mdcm.arts.unsw.edu.au/1000-1999/Assignments/ SixDegrees/index.html
Rocket8
www.rocket8.com
The Hunger Site
www.thehungersite.com
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald
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