|
Aaron Dantowitz and I've done this experiment once, and we deliberately
constrained it as an e-forward to one other person. Which copies Milgram
but doesn't use the power of the Net. It didn't show much -- almost
all nets petered out before they got to my Sacramento cousin Lloyd. As I recall,
Bill Richards was the first to achieve completion. We did discover a
westward forwarding pattern from Toronto towards Califronia, but this may
be because we didn't supply much other information about cousin Lloyd.
To use the power of the Net, you'd allow one person to forward to multiple
others, but this struck us as having mushrooming qualities which could
soon choke the net, just like the old send the kid in Georgia your
business card stuff, or the new Stuflbn.exe virus hoax.
Barry
___________________________________________________________________
Barry Wellman Professor of Sociology NetLab Director
[log in to unmask] http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto
455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162
___________________________________________________________________
On Thu, 20 Dec 2001, Valdis wrote:
> Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 17:07:45 -0500
> From: Valdis <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: 6 degrees of email connectivity?
>
> How would Milgram's experiment be different in the age of email?
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/technology/circuits/20STUD.html
> [NY Times requires a 'free' registration]
>
> Happy Holidays Everyone!
>
> Valdis
>
|
