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.

Comments

Effects of the Net

[deadhammer]

The Net has great and ponderous effects, such as creating studies to show the great and ponderous effects of the net.

well...

[chegosaurus]

It broadens the mind by introducing you to subgenres of pr0n that you never knew existed.

Me and the Net

[X!0mbarg]

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...

Re:Interesting, but how much will it proove?

[Anonymous Coward]

if the internet changed fundamentally every six months, the average person wouldn't be able to understand it enough to use it.

The average person doesn't understand the Internet enough to actually use it! Hell, most people have trouble with the difference between "Preview" and "Subm

What the Net Did To Me

[Skirwan]

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!

Does this statement make sense?

[f00zbll]

"How do we learn fast enough so that we are learning faster than the world changes?" asked Mr Graham, "if we are not learning faster than the world changes then we cannot possibly control it."

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.

Thanks, Eli

[sam_handelman]

"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.

Disabled

[tsa]

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!

Normalization of Sexual 'Deviancy'

[Bonker]

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.

Re:Normalization of Sexual 'Deviancy'

[PygmyTrojan]

Ahhh yes, thanks internet, for letting me now that it's okay to take a crap in my girlfriend's mouth.

Re:It is not 'deviancy' - it is 'perversion'

[Dirtside]

but common sense tells us that this is unnatural

Actually, no, it's usually the Christian Bible that tells us this is unnatural, or other such works of man. There are animals in nature that engage in homosexual play, mostly chimps and other apes who are closely related to us (which is probably not a coincidence). An organism that does not reproduce because it is homosexual is unlikely to propagate its genes, but this does not automatically translate to "morally wrong," as your usage of terms like "unnatural" connotes. Sentient, able-minded humans who are homosexual have every right to live their lives as they see fit. Only if you believe that every human has a moral imperative to reproduce as much as possible, can a homosexual be logically considered "ill."

However, those who pride themselves on disease instead of attempting to free themselves of it are fairly obviously unstable in some way.

You have yet to establish that homosexuals are suffering from anything that can reasonably be called "disease." Your definition of disease, from the beginning of the paragraph, appears to be, "Anything which hinders an organism's reproduction," but you have not specified why this is a good definition. Dictionary.com's entry for "disease" does not mention reproductive fitness.

I do not deny that there may be a fair number of people who are openly homosexual but otherwise largely moral.

You did deny this, or at the very least imply it strongly, when you said:

Modern society is learning the hard way that you can't encourage perversion and expect people to act morally.

While this doesn't explicitly say that perversion = immorality, the obvious consequent is that people who are perverted will be immoral.

The fact that plenty of people in mental hospitals across the world are nonviolent doesn't mean it's time to give each of them a machete and release them; the same principle applies to the class of mentally ill under discussion.

No, it does not. The nonviolent mentally ill you reference (presumably people who cannot cope on their own in society) are distinctly different from homosexuals, who can (and do) cope on their own, and are for the most part indistinguishable from heterosexuals. I could as easily label as "mentally ill" those who claim the existence of a benevolent (but undetectable) superbeing who divinely intervenes with human affairs, leaving no concrete evidence of his passing. There is no reason that consenting adults should not be allowed to do as they will, so long as their actions do not harm a nonconsenting other.