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What The Net is Doing to You

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the one-step-closer-to-the-morlocks dept.

Bart writes "The BBC reports One of the world's first research centres dedicated to studying the social, political and economic effects of the net has opened in Oxford" I've offered to trade CowboyNeal to them as a research subject for a case of beer. I think studying the effects of the internet on him will save lives. See? Someone is thinking of the children.

3 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Cliff Stoll had some comments on this... by CoolVibe · · Score: 3, Informative
    ...regarding the effects of the internet on social life and people.

    Check out the realvideo (yeah sorry) technetcast presentation here . It's refreshing, to the point and funny. And oh so typically Cliff Stoll-ian. :)

  2. Thanks, Eli by sam_handelman · · Score: 5, Informative

    "We must save the internet from its founding myth that it is good for democracy and is open and cannot be regulated."

    Oh, is *that* why we need to be told what to do? For DEMOCRACY?

    Eli Noam is an academic who moonlights as a beurecrat. Based on his webpage, he doesn't seem to advocate censorship exactly - he wants to somehow use regulation to encourage people to talk one another when they have diverse social backgrounds. This is a laudable goal, and I'm certainly no anti-government nut - but this is a stupid target for regulation. Like regulation to make people be nice.

    He complains about centralization of information. This has NOT been my experience with the web - EXCEPT for academic journals. If he wants regulation to require peer-reviewed academic journals to make their content available for free online; well, that would be great. I'd support that 100%. A journal that wants money shouldn't publish publically funded research.

    The fact is - the protocols (TCP/IP, http/html) fascilitate free, open and DIVERSE exchanges of communication. I can't think of any changes I'd make that would encourage people to interact with people of diverse experience. If there were improvements to these fundamental protocols, there would some justification in legislating them (you'd get them no other way), but I don't think his goals are well enough defined, or the effects well enough understood, to even talk about this as an option at this juncture.

    His op-ed pieces are particularly enlightening if you really care what he thinks.

    --
    The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
  3. Only Research Center?? by redragon · · Score: 3, Informative

    They must be on crack. There are many different places looking at these sorts of things:

    http://dir.yahoo.com/Social_Science/Science__Tec hn ology__and_Society_Studies/

    Seriously...most places that do cultural analysis of science are also looking at the effects of the internet.

    --
    - Sighuh?