http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/wsj_software.html

I recently came across an interesting article called “Six Degrees of Exploitation? — New Programs Help Companies `Mine’ Workers’ Relationships For Key Business Prospects”. It is a Wall Street Journal article written by William M. Burkeley and Wailin Wong in August of 2003. Clearly, the article is quite old in technology years and is also a bit out of date, but I think it presents many interesting ideas that can supplement our in-class discussion of “six degrees of freedom”.

The article discusses the creation of software that companies can use to seek out new business contacts. This software works by searching through employees’ electronically stored correspondence with acquaintances, which could be stored in computer address books, calendars, email, buddy lists on instant messenger, or some other medium (Burkeley and Wong). If the person using the software finds a business contact that interest him, he can request an introduction from the employee whose information he used to find this person (Burkeley and Wong).

In the context of our discussion of “six degrees of freedom”, this software can be thought of as allowing the user to see one step ahead in the network of acquaintances. The users still need to, or at least should, ask a fellow employee to introduce him to his acquaintance, so no step is completely eliminated. This greater visibility of the social network should certainly make new business opportunities available, but it is obvious that these types of systems also introduce many new privacy and ethics issues.

These systems can be compared to the way online social networking sites could be used today. In particular, a user of Facebook.com may look through the profiles of an acquaintance’s list of friends. If the user decides that he wants to meet one of these people, he can ask his acquaintance to introduce him.