PROJECT_INDEX  
dollar is a network experiment completed for a class entitled thinking about networks, taught by clay shirky. I mailed twenty 1$ bills to twenty acquaintances. The envelopes contined the single 1$ bill a stamp, an address sticker and descriptive instructions to: reuse the envelope, replace the cancelled stamp with the new one, add the address label and mail the envelope, adding anything they might like to the envelope. To measure any potential social capital one-half of the envelopes had either a return address with my name or the label inside was addressed to me. The other half were addressed to an assistant that no one in the experiment would know.
The idea was that people that knew me would be more inclined to send on the dollar due to their social connection to me. The other test being run was the security of the postal service network on which my network depended on. The transparency of the envelopes made the contents quite clear.
The results of my running the network can be found in greater detail here if you email me, due to privacy concerns, but lets just say I only got back $9 from my beloved friends.
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