Connections

In the 90s, people found it fun to share chain letters. At the time, this was something new to many of us, so we found them fun. We received and then passed them on, but over the volume of chain letters become a torrent of spam. The letter is fun the first time you see it. If twenty people forwarded it to 20 more, then we’re speaking about four hundred e-mails. We’re speaking about thousands of letters that have no productive effect on society.

Last night I watched Six Degrees of Separation. I had heard about it a few years ago when one of the first networking sites began. The aim of the website was to prove that you were related to everyone through six degrees. What this meant that was that by knowing a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend you were related to everyone. The idea of the website was to see primary connections, i.e. your friends and then the friends of friends. The site didn’t survive that long but over websites came after it so the idea is still around through myspace and over such social networking websites.