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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
It broadens the mind by introducing you to subgenres of pr0n that you never knew existed.
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.
"We must save the internet from its founding myth that it is good for democracy and is open and cannot be regulated."
Yes. There it is. They know better than you what you should be done with the net.
"Don't Follow Leaders." Bob Dylan
Dynamic is one thing, but if the internet changed fundamentally every six months, the average person wouldn't be able to understand it enough to use it. If you look at things in general sweeping terms, the change is not happening so rapidly that it is impossible to comment on them. Even if it was, if can't know where you are going, you could at least know where you've been.
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...
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.
The Internet has given the "common man" direct access to politicians and information about political topics.
Pardon? Direct access? You mean being able to send an email to your local MP/governor/député? People have always been able to do this with snail mail. By "information about political topics" i guess you mean the stuff that newspapers and TV news have been reporting for years. Direct access to information is hearing it from the horses mouth, not reading it on Yahoo news.
I regret to say that the common man has no more direct access than, say, 20 years ago, especially the common man that doesn't have internet. 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. I don't necessarily think of this as a good thing since the opinions of a great deal of people that cannot be pestered to go to the trouble of expressing them outside of their own homes are often, sadly, not worth listening to.
The change in political activism will, I think, be felt essentially by the broadening of the divide between people who read about things on the web and mouth off on Slashdot and those who, because they can't (no internet) or won't (having real beliefs) do this, get out and try and change things.
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
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.
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
"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.
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.
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
It's not a study. It's a research centre. It will probably produce studies.
"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
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.
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
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
I haven't heard of any such studies, and studies like that tend to get published and get attention only when they have results that the researcher and the media think are really interesting- studies showing the opposite would end up in file drawers with a lot of dust on them. Still, if studies show that lab rats tend to ingest cocaine if it is in their immediate environment, does that show that ingesting cocaine is healthy and natural?
Let's face it, sexual tendencies and related feelings in humans aren't there because it is evolutionarily useful to look at pr0n or have homosexual relations, just as the receptor sites in neurons aren't shaped the way they are in order to bind to LSD.
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.
News media is biased. Those reports don't sit on shelves they just go to christian media sources.
You can find a study to point out the good merits of just about anything.
None of this silly crap really matters though.
Homos arn't nearly as much a threat as all the "good christian people" driving around in their SUVs, breeding like rabbits (condoms are the devil too ya know!), wasting resources, and then voting for their government to blast 2nd and 3rd world countries off the map to sustain their way of life.
Atleast pr0n freaks are only hurting themselves.
Homosexuals don't get to choose who they're attracted to any more than heterosexuals do. My advice to you is to go find a gay or lesbian group, get to know some of its members, and hopefully you'll learn that they are, in most ways, the same as rest of us.
But then, that idea probably scares you, doesn't it?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
> 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
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Social structures are common among organisms because they, however indirectly, help organisms survive and spread their genes better. Social animals procreate more often, and have healthier offspring, than non-social animals, generally speaking. Obviously there are still plenty of non-social animals, but they are dwarfed in number by social animals.
His point, poorly made, was not that the concept of society is fictional, bur rather that any given social structure is a fiction, existing only in the minds of those involved. A society is not a thing the way a house is a thing. If you have people, and they build a house, and then the people all die, the house still exists. If you have a society of people, and the people all die, the society no longer exists.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Let's ask ourselves not wat the net is doing to us... but what WE are doing to the net... ;-)