Oh, What a Tangled Web We Weave

Abstract

Not long ago, a friend had an experience that some might call a "post-modern, social network/computer network crossover event." She works at a large research lab, and one day sent an email letter of acceptance to a prospective summer student. Two days later, my friend got email from her sister,who has no connection to my friend's lab and lives in Europe. Amazingly, the second email contained a copy of the acceptance letter. The explanation for this happening that first comes to mind is probably some sentence containing the phrases "degrees of separation" or "connectivity of the Web." I suggest that as scientists, we might not want to accept these buzzwords as an explanation and, more to the point, that these phenomena raise important and exciting computational issues.