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What The Net is Doing to You
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.
The Net has great and ponderous effects, such as creating studies to show the great and ponderous effects of the net.
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
The Internet is a dynamic place. I don't think that a traditional study can accuratly describe the effects that it has on us.
I think that this study will be outdated as soon as it is written.
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
Perhaps science could explain why direct sunlight and fresh air kills us so quickly?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
It broadens the mind by introducing you to subgenres of pr0n that you never knew existed.
Eli Noam, Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Columbia, said... "We must save the internet from its founding myth that it is good for democracy and is open and cannot be regulated." I don't even have anything to say to this... besides, I'm sure the rest of you will. peace, tom
www.thinkofthechildren.co.uk
Sure, it's off topic, but I have karma to burn.
Deleted
Heh. There is a photo of some shirtless, tatooed protester swinging a punch to a policeman, with as caption:"The net could help improve political debate". Anybody else thinks the BBC has a strange idea of political debate? Besides, how is the net going to improve political debate, or at least raise it above the level depicted in that photo? Soon, we'll all be wetware-wired into the net, and then, instead of beating you with a stick, the cops i'll just fry your brains instead. It's called progress.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Sunlight and fresh air is good for you! I can't believe you didn't know that. Christ, some people...
Now, with that out of the way, let's discuss what it may be about eating other things than pizza that causes all these heart problems.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Is what this article sounds like. As if they want to be able to control the entire world's perception of the internet, and how they use it. This won't work of course, as business, personal beliefs, economics, and social concerns are the main driving factors in the electronic world. not some lame researcher in a cube telling everyone in his livejournal that they should think about everything in a different way
Surely the impact of the Net is totally obvious.
The Net lowers the cost of communication.
This lets people create much larger and more efficient network.
Activities that depend on such networks (research, digital theft, collaborative research, free software development, certain kinds of commerce) have and will continue to boom.
Activities that depend on the high cost of communications (old media, encyclopedia salesmen, and other information cartels) have and will continue to decline.
This seems to be stating the obvious... what else will a study turn up? That we are evolving resistance to RSI?
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Well, I got so see more Pr0n than I ever imagined. Saw stuff that made me want to wash my eyes with liquid drano. Downloaded a Lot of useless crap. Became addicted to Online Comics. Made a handful of new friends. Got myself an e-mail account through a friend in Oslo. Learned that there are a Lot of ways to cheat...
Search engines are my friends!
So much data. So little HD space...
that more people have a voice. The Internet has given the "common man" direct access to politicians and information about political topics. If citizens are more informed and can take a greater role in political decisions, there are likely to be less instances of protests and riots. It will improve the political debate by giving citizens a more "civilized" method of accessing politicians. Not that it will necessarily eliminate the days of the protest and riot, but it should help to make more informed and connected citizens.
"Herbivores eat well cause their food never, ever runs."
Check out the realvideo (yeah sorry) technetcast presentation here . It's refreshing, to the point and funny. And oh so typically Cliff Stoll-ian. :)
Sure, there's this organization that is DEDICATED to studying The Net and the "profound" social changes it has engendered.. right, so where's the ground breaking results? The article is highly speculative, and contains little of value, I think someone just got caught by the catchy title without any core value..
My 2gilders
d
Am I the only one that first read this as "What the dot-Net is doing to you"?
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
But he warned against simply accepting that the net was a force for good all by itself and needed no guidance by policy makers to shape its effects.
This is why I hate these social-engineering dweebs. It can never be enough that something is just there and people use it. They think that the common man is too stupid to "understand the ramifications" and that there has to be broad and sweeping "policies" on what to think of it and how to use it.
I'll blame it on leftists, you can blame it on whoever.
Loaded on user's computer Dec 31, 2003. (You'd think a site devoted to computing would have halfway decent servers.)
Who else thinks these guys just want to view pr0n, visit chatrooms and play games all day?
Sounds like a research grant I would think up :)
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Mostly The Net just bored me. Sandra Bullock did the best she could with the script, but the entire thing was exactly the sort of paranoid FUD that makes people think they can get sick by using a computer with a virus.
Now, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes? Classic!
--
Damn the Emperor!
I'd rather not think of Cowboy Neal making children...
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
(Even though a Brit invented it.)
Too much academic naval watching. This stuff already happened five human years ago, or 35 "Internet years" ago. Excerpt from article:
"But academics are starting to find out how important an agent of social change the internet is, the opportunities it presents for researchers and how to frame policy and practice to cope with its associated changes."
Any 15 year old kid could could have told this five years ago. Adults, especially academics, are clueless.
Seeing that the Internet is a great place where people can do research and download p0rn and do many things unimaginable before the advent of it, (excluding SPAM) I can only see good things coming out of this study. For every new idea/technology, there are bound to be good and bad sides to it. -SK
Does anyone else see a logical flaw in that argument? It's not like knowledge == control. If knowledge was measurable in quantity and quality, then the statement might make sense. But I've yet to see compelling proof that such measurement is practicle or desireable. Since when did we have control over technology? The statement in that context almost implies we have control over "it" and that some how we will loose "control over it."
It seems like they still have a lot of work to do, like defining what "it" is and how to go about measuring "it". Otherwise, it will just be a truck load of political jargons.
Foxy Cleopatra: "So, what does this thing do?"
Austin Powers: "Well it's called the internet, and it's completely revolutionized the way we live and access vital information. For example have a look at this...
monkey.mpg
Foxy: "Wow... now that's vital information."
Austin: "I know, it's amazing!"
mole.sig
The internet has helped me in soooo many ways, I can't thank it enough. Before the internet, I didn't know much about p0rn. Now there is so much more to see, so much to play with.... Thank GOD for the intenet.
"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.
Hmm, A case a beer huh? Might want to ask for two cases of beer.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
They must be on crack. There are many different places looking at these sorts of things:
c hn ology__and_Society_Studies/
http://dir.yahoo.com/Social_Science/Science__Te
Seriously...most places that do cultural analysis of science are also looking at the effects of the internet.
- Sighuh?
For disabled people that don't leave the house often it's even more of a godsent than for 'normal' people. Finally they have a cheap and vast and versatile tool for getting and sending information!
-- Cheers!
What kind of beer?
It broadens the mind by introducing you to subgenres of pr0n that you never knew existed.
While the above post was joking, the idea is true. The internet has done more to make sexuality and sexual practices that were 'deviant' before the mid 1990's into more normal every day things.
In some respects this is very good. People who were otherwise unable to express themselves now have an outlet. People can find partners and build relationships that they would never have had a chance to in the past.
In some respects this is very bad. People who are truly sick-- those who sexually molest children to get their jollies-- are lulled into a sense of normalcy by the apparent 'commonness' of their illness.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
The net taught me enough shocking things about rocking the casbah, that there would be small challenge in making a sailor blush.
It taught me that humanity itself is plagued with idiots; not just the populace of the United States.
On the plus side, because of the net, I learned what real music sounds like. On the down side, the RIAA is now more determined than ever before to shove crap into my ears, all because of the net.
I think, however, that the most important thing that has happened to me because of the net is this: Because of the internet, I've been able to 'own' camping bitches all the way over in France.
Cheese eating quad-camping surrender monkeys.
The 'net has allowed us to capatilize on our synergy while moving to a B2B model and later B2C. During this time we leveraged our user community and capatilized through eCommerce.
Then we ran out of funding and went broke. But it was a fun couple-a-few years.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
To quote the Great and Wonderful OZ.
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
One man's info babble becomes another man's reality?
Just think of what H.G. Wells could have done with the Net!
The sum of our knowledge today becomes the reference point of our ignorance tomorrow.
Here are the results:
Social effects: Porn distributions reach an all time high. Minors are exposed to porn as soon as they learn how to type "http://". Divorse is at an all time high because a woman from Ohio can chat with a "rich guy" from Texas while her "hard" working hubby is at work all day (masturbating to the new porn sites he found on his son's computer last night).
Political: People finally realized how much fun the President really gets to have in the oval office - we impeached him (jellousy!!)! People also excahnged a record number of politcal cartoons via email - Al Gore looses election!
Economic: The Internet brought the world economy out of the early 90's depression, created stocks with price earnings ratios of 50x and up, people could trade stocks online - which further drove up the over inflated stocks. Poor people became millionaires overnight - and are now poor again because they spent all their money on a super bowl commercial. Now the economy has collapsed around itself and unemployment is at an all time high (except for the people that are doing this study
And who said you need a PhD to document the effects of the net?
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Our U.S. equivalent, of course, might be Carnegie Mellon University -- from which we got all sorts of The Internet is Soooooo Scary "studies" for a while. (Remember the Time Magazine article back in 1994 or so that claimed 75% of all Web traffic was pRon? That was based on a C-M U paper. The more recent "study" that said people who browsed a lot tended to be depressed and socially isolated? Guess what University published it. Somebody at Carnegie Mellon has a hateful thing going on, seems like.)
It's advocacy over actual information, as far as U.S. pop media's appetite for "studies" goes.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Seems like they mixed up their images, that was actually from the Manchester United finals.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I'm sorry but I never want people who dress up in fur suits to have sex to become accepted by society. After all, part of their fun is to be outsiders and I don't need to see a guy dressed as Barney with an erection sticking out.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
"All that has happened is the "lazy man" has found a way to send his opinions and read other people's without getting out of his house."
Sort of like posting to Slashdot?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Actually, the internet has given politicians the ability to communicate directly with the world, not just their constituents, via their web sites and email. Not that they couldn't send out newsletters before, but email newsletters are more cost-effective.
Case in point: Back when I lived in NC, I signed up to be on my Senator's email mailing list. Even though I've moved to another state, I still get the messages, which include info like when he'll be appearing on various news shows and what cities in NC he'll be visiting that week.
I think it's the ability to get out timely information like that where the internet beats out traditional media. Newspapers and snail mail are more expensive and slower, TV and radio are here-and-gone so if you didn't write that information down, too bad. The internet is uniquely fast and long-lasting.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
Eve ate apple from the Tree of Knowledge and thus gained god-like insight into the human plight. Or at least, that's the metaphor.
But these bums who obsess on controlling the internet and all knowlege would be like a Bureaucrat, a Politician, and an Entrepreneur who entered the Garden, kicked G-d out and set up Garden of Eden Apples Lmt. They would then eat apple-sauce, apple cider, and apple apples.
Meanwhile GOAL would contract out to the timber industry for sawdust and the slop industry for protein, and use a Red #5 and a factory to produce Consumer Renewable Apple Protien-Supplement for consumption by the general populace.
Ohhh, and somewhere along the way, they would also convince everyone that due to G-d's absence, they in fact were G-d.
I firmly believe that promiscuity and homosexuality both constitute being 'truly sick'. You can talk all you want about how urges were 'repressed' and people need to 'express themselves,' but (contrary to popular opinion) psychology does NOT vindicate things like this in the least, and it is NOT psychologically healthy to do so. Pornography, promiscuity, and homosexuality really are like illegal drugs- you tamper with the way your body is ordered in an attempt to produce more pleasure and get all sorts of negative effects. If the Net is providing an 'outlet' for this kind of thing, that would be one of its worst effects, not one of its positive ones.
Modern society is learning the hard way that you can't encourage perversion and expect people to act morally. When we all grasp this basic truth, the world will be a lot better off.
I'm bound to be flamed to death for this. Sometimes the truth is difficult, unpopular, and publicly termed 'intolerant.' It needs to be told nonetheless.
we need to pay politicians and bureaucrats to tell us what to do in cyberspace... the one place where the 1st Amendment should reign supreme...
Hmm, last I checked, I don't have a 1st Amendment in my Constitution, and "cyberspace," being, as nearly as I can define it, not really a "place" at all so much as a metaphor for a place, doesn't de facto or de jure fall under completely US jurisdiction (no matter what you all might think cough Sklyarov cough), that's an extremely Americocentric way of putting it.
Now free speech, on the other hand, freedom of the press, perhaps, and certainly multilateralism and international cooperation, I'll go for.
In any case, we don't need stodgy academics, consolidationist free-market wet-dream media moguls, or anyone else turning the internet into television with fewer moving parts (there's a reason I don't watch television!) -- nor in preaching the scripture that the freedom and openness of the internet are an illusion that should be dispelled as soon as possible (to what end?).
As with all agendists of every stripe, I have to ask what this guy's ulterior motives are. Can some kind Slashdotter with some time on their hands find out who's (which media company, dare I venture?) paying him?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but this story got google'd. Does this mean /. is real news now? Horror of horrors.
. ht ml
http://news.google.com/news/gntechnologyleftnav
managers...why god invented purgatory
It's wasting my time! Thanks a lot, Slashdot. Thanks a lot, Onion. Thanks a lot, MSNB-- er, comment over. Gotta go.
Thing(s) you would be likely to get for Cowboy Neal in trade:
- Case of beer
- Case of Scotch
- Case of Maalox
- Case of SPF 90
- Case of depression
- Case of anxiety
- Case of Cowboy Neal's Genuine Imitation Butter Substitute
My other sig is a Mercedes
Here are a just a few others off top on my head (all of those have existed for several years):
- U. of Toronto's NetLab
- U. of Michigan School of Information
- Berkeley Center for Globalization and Information Technology
- Berkeley Center for Information Technology and Marketplace Transformation
This by no means is a complete list - I am just too lazy to paste more links. Also, a number of books have been published on the subjects, e.g. The Internet in Everyday Life, The Control Revolution, etc.Today is an important anniversary for Oxford.
non-christian faiths.
Your comment has nothing to do with the topic.
Sure, it's off topic, but I have karma to burn.
Moderators,
Have you had an irony bypass today ?
The link is to a parody of mass media hysteria currently being stired up in the UK by the low-end tabloids and minor celeberaties about the 'corruption of children' by the Internet.
In my humble opinion, this is frighteningly ontopic for this article.
Because the openess of the net mimics in some ways the closeness between 'common' and leader in the early days of democracy.
The printing press made it possible for folks like Tom Paine to print up and rapidly distribute political pamphlets (Paines writings, like "Common Sense" are often credited with being more important than Washington's leadership in winning the war), which were read aloud and widely discussed in the many taverns of the day.
There was much less distance between leaders and 'commons', (since there were so few taverns?;-), & folks are reported to have discussed politics much more openly and frequently than folks do in pulblic today.
So the net may well encourage more open debate, debates that folks are often afraid or don't care to have in person anymore, and may help the 'commons' communicate more directly with the leaders. But I'm not sure it will lead to less protest, unless the leaders listen willingly. My guess is that the ability of disaffected groups to communicate rapidly and globally will lead to more protests, at least until a good way is found to let folks excercise their political power through the web (like e-referenda?) rather than in the streets...
Will this study be publish on the net?
A friend paid me a complement recently, he said I was mentally prepared for life as a cyborg.
I'm a software developer, and a 28-yr-old grrl. Always been into coding and the internet. What changed me recently is that I started telecommuting, and mmorpg (Darg Age of Camelot = crack).
I used to exercise almost every day, make dinner, and shower regularly. Now I'm constantly on either my work notebook or my gaming pc. I avoid leaving the house until I've run out of code red. I lost my connection for 9 hours and 20 minutes about a month ago, and I freaked.
What is the net doing to me? People here have made posts about the news and politics and porn, but I'm talking about daily life changes, and who I am at the core of my being. I still don't give a crap about politics, but almost all my socializing happens over the internet, and certainly all my work does, and my play. (sorry, no porn). None of this bothers me, I so completely enjoy life this way.
Until someone takes my connectivity away again...
> Well, for one, the observed tendency is for many (though definitely not all) negative effects of promiscuity, pornography, and homosexuality to be social negative effects.
1 /yate-j02 .shtml
i de/horb/horb-c 14.html
Reference?
> A few months ago, some pervert broke into a private home 50 miles north of mine in the middle of the night and kidnapped a preteen girl.
"Until the terrible events of June 20, Russell and Andrea Yates and their five children were the kind of family that a Ronald Reagan might have pointed to as a model for America, or that might have been paraded on the platform at a Republican national convention: responsible, professional father; "stay-at-home mom" and home-school teacher; well-scrubbed, neatly dressed, smiling children--a tribute to "traditional family values," as envisioned by the Christian right."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jul200
So do you call Christians "immoral perverts" since Andrea Yates was one? Maybe the Bible made her do it?
From my own review of the evidence, it seems to me that people who prey on other people generally have biochemical problems, probably mostly related to genetics. Certainly some drugs & experiences can exacerbate these problems (such as Yate's religious experiences that led her to claim her kids were possesed), but ultimately, there is simply something medically wrong with a human predator, blaming other folks who are superficially like them clouds the issue: just because a Christian drowned her kids doesn't mean that Christians tend to drown their kids. Nor do homosexuals tend to abuse children.
The fact is, folks who have biochemical problems tend to latch on to some experience in their life as the source of these problems, be it hearing about the devil in church or seeing pr0n on the 'net, these things tend to be _SYMPTOMS_ of an underlying biochemical problem, not CAUSES.
Its easy to blame the problem on some behavior we don't like for our own reasons (I tend not to enjoy the company of religious rightists, for instance) but the fact is that people who have tendancies toward doing violence to other people need to either learn to control those tendancies themselves or be put away. It's that simple.
As far as 'perversion' being the cause of violence, children were abused, people were raped, even back when folks who were 'different' were generally ostracized if not burned & I'm not sure the evidence suggests that there was less predatory violence in the past than there is today.
For instance:
History of Rape: A Bibliography
http://www.geocities.com/history_gu
Let's ask ourselves not wat the net is doing to us... but what WE are doing to the net... ;-)
I have travelled the length and breadth of this country, and have talked with
the best people in business administration. I can assure you on the highest
authority that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year.
-- Editor in charge of business books at Prentice-Hall
publishers, responding to Karl V. Karlstrom (a junior
editor who had recommended a manuscript on the new
science of data processing), c. 1957
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