Entering the New World

Not more than a lifetime ago, we defined the world by a collection of countries. Countries were defined by a collection of states or regions. And those regions were defined by communities that were geographically close together. As we herald the new millennium, we find that these definitions no longer define the entirety of our existence. We exist now in cyber-communities. Our boundaries are defined by the groups we chose to belong to, not our physical locations. Our "home" is defined by a series of numbers that represents a machine upon which an account sits. A 5-megabyte sized portal into this new world.

Each day, more and more people are reaching out to join the cyberworld of the Internet. Our everyday live, from how we shop and spend our leisure time to how we work, is changing. People are logging on to search for jobs or post their resumes at such places like Career Builders or Monster Board. Websites are being used to organize lives coordinate major events. Family ancestries uncovered. Lost relatives found. Loved ones keeping in touch via Web-based family communities. Significant others found through games, chats, and email.

More so than ever before, "no man is an island". Like a huge net, where people make up the individual nodes, we will all be connected.

At least... that is the premise of Six Degrees. Six Degrees started out as a game. The concept was the figure out how any two entities were connected by the people they associated with. The most common starting point was normally the actor, Kevin Bacon, due to his wide exposure in the entertainment industry. An example would be to link Kevin Beacon with Marilyn Monroe.

1. Marilyn Monroe was in "Some Like it Hot" with Jack Lemmon
2. Jack Lemmon was in "JFK" with Kevin Bacon

Each step is another degree.

The group, Six Degrees, is determined to link everyone on the Internet to everyone else by six degrees or less. It works by people submitting information about themselves and who and how they are linked to others on the Internet.

Others are sharing their life's stories. Where once people kept personal experiences locked up in diaries that they hid under their pillows, homepages are surfacing that share these secrets with the world.

But not all of the changes can be viewed favorably. Many are beginning to suffer from what is known as Internet Addiction, as serious a disease as gambler's addiction. Fear surrounds copyrights and security, as information becomes more available. Scams and means to steal money have surfaced. New Internet crimes are happening all over the world. Workers are spending countless hours surfing the net and reading email. Some are even loosing their jobs over it. And perhaps most profound, as the world slipped over to the year 2000, businesses around the world were immobilized with fear for 24 hours to account for each of the time zones to which their computers connect.

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