Thank you Judy, for offering a 'leading activity' through which we might explore some of the dynamics of the internet. My studies with Eva on mailing list exchanges have provided some insight into traffic on the Internet and I wish to share something. What I present is simply in a matter of fact form -- unprepared for this event, and wishing to respond quickly to why I think you should not engage in the chain letter process, I am simply writing quickly what I know -- and please do not take this as a reprimand -- I simply wish to build awareness of the communicaiton-ecological consequences of our using the internet together.
Chain letters, if followed to the letter (pun unintended) will bring the Internet to its knees. Here is a thought experiment -- Suppose each person forwarded their letter on to six friends and each person in turn did the same, and so on. The number of letters in each new generation, barring duplicates (that would be inevitable) will grow as six to the nth power, where n is the number of times the letter is sent. ie, the progression would look like this:
n letters
1 6
2 36
3 216
4 1,296
5 7,776
6 46,656
7 279,936
8 1,679,616
9 10,077,696
10 60,466,176
11 362,797,056
12 2,176,782,336
13 13,060,694,016
14 78,364,164,096
15 470,184,984,576
16 2,821,109,907,456
17 16,926,659,444,736
18 101,559,956,668,416
19 609,359,740,010,496
20 3,656,158,440,062,980
By 20 generations, nearly 4,000 trillion letters would be sent. It is quite literally a 'chain reaction' and long before then, the internet servers would be unable to handle the demand for sending packets of information. Fortunately people may choose not to forward email and so the progression of this thought experiment is an extreme case. (Although I like entertaining the idea of sending Microsoft into bankruptcy. ) Other reasons for self-regulation are explored in my temporal model working paper.
Nevertheless, the Internet is a renewable shared resource of finite capacity (across any increment of time) and chain letters are gluttonous consumers of that capacity -- their propagation leads to what Garret Hardin has called 'The tragedy of the commons'. His article, that originally appeared in the journal 'Science', is reproduced at the web site below:
http://www.free-eco.org/free/FP/TragedyCommons.html
I look forward to discussing this more later -- but I must go back to grading!
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Lesley College, 29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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