America's View of the Internet

Alien54 writes "It won't make you dinner or rub your feet, but nearly one in four Americans say that the Internet can serve as a substitute for a significant other for some period of time, according to a new poll released today by 463 Communications and Zogby International. The poll examined views of what role the Internet plays in people's lives and whether government should play a greater role in regulating it. The online survey was conducted Oct. 4-8, 2007, included 9,743 adult respondents nationwide, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.0 percentage point. From the results blog post: 'More than half of Americans believe that Internet content such as video should be controlled in some way by the government. Only 33% of 18 to 24 year-olds supported government stepping in on content, while 72% of those over 70 years of age support government regulation and ratings. More than one in four Americans has a social networking profile such as MySpace or Facebook. Among 18-24 year-olds, it's almost mandatory - 78% of them report having a social networking profile. Americans may love the Internet, but most are not prepared to implant it into their brain, even if it was safe. Only 11% of respondents said they be willing to safely implant a device that enabled them to use their mind to access the Internet.'"

Comments

Rather misleading....

[UncleTogie]

More than half of Americans believe that Internet content such as video should be controlled in some way by the government. Only 33% of 18 to 24 year-olds supported government stepping in on content, while 72% of those over 70 years of age support government regulation and ratings.

Now, ask the same question, but instead substitute "TV programs" for "Internet content". I'll bet you the percentage breakdown doesn't change much.

This isn't about "internet content", it's about what standards a work of art is judged by.

"Only" 11% want Internet wetware?

[xPsi]

Only 11% of respondents said they be willing to safely implant a device that enabled them to use their mind to access the Internet. Ahh, 11% may be small for a political poll, but 11% seems HUGE for a question like that considering it is supposed to scale up to the population at large. That would be like the entire state of California and Massachusetts together deciding to get wetware WiFi for every man, woman, and child. I expect the number of people actually willing to do such a thing in the US is much smaller than that. Neil Degrasse Tyson made a similar observation about the statistic that 93% of members of the Academy of Sciences doubt or actively disbelieve in the existence of a personal god. The 93% isn't really all that surprising. That makes sense. What is surprising to me is that 7% do.

Re:Brain implants?

[MBGMorden]

Depends on what method of control they're talking about. If they mean online games (or pr0n), then a neural interface would be absolutely awesome.

Especially simulated reality hooked directly into the brain. We know from dreams that the brain can process things quicker where our sense of time passing is not "real time" (ie, a dream that seems to go on for 30 minutes might take place in a MUCH shorter ammount of real time).

How cool would it be to go on a simulated 2 week vacation to the Bahamas, but only really spend 1 hour running the simulation? Or perhaps it could even be reduced further in time. Why get upset over death when we could live an entire lifetime of extra activites in a single evening (think of that old Star Trek TNG episode where Picard lived an alt life where he was an old man with grandchildren and then upon death reawoke on the bridge, with only 2-3 minutes having passed). Of course, the addiction possibility here would be high. Imagine how much work place productivity would suffer if every time an employee came back to work each morning they've spent a virtual 6-months away in paradise.

polls, democracy and republics

[drDugan]

I read stories like this and have to, with a wry grin, shake my head and roll my eyes.

The idea that groups determine with a democratic vote how a society functions is both absurd and an essential part of the American dream. By dream I mean just that - a mythical non-reality created to give hope to people who otherwise would not accept the reality they have.

Repeat after me:
America is not a democracy!
America is not a democracy!
America is not a democracy!

America is a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. Learn the difference. This means the country has laws first (a Constitution), and the US has a democratic process to elect the people respnsible for upholding and execting the rules of the republic. At no time, and in no way were the opinions of the masses asked for, expected, or accepted in figuring out how the system works - and with good reason: their beliefs were/are easily swayed, grossly under-informed, and as anyone who has tried to decide anything by committee or group: group opinion taking is non-functional.

However, most American dwell in the dream that things in the US are "democratic" - that the way a group, the world, the Internet, or the USA "should" function is that we ask everyone, take a vote, and the highest count wins. Bzzzzt. WRONG. Bad Idea. I see this mentality driving the idea that Zogby should do some poll of the population for what "the people" think the government should do about Internet content. This mentality is extremely wrong, and will get people into a lot of trouble. In America, the answer you get from the masses is directly proportional to what rich, powerful white men craft as messages for the masses to believe.

Strangly, increased capacity for communication will and has made such polling much easier than ever before. It does not make it more valid or more useful in creating policy or a smoothly functioning, successful society.

Aside from the bonehead mentality that we should all vote to determine policy - there is an even simpler issue here. Once one understands how and why this country was formed, and the principles behind it - it becomes obvious that regulating content on huge ditributed computer networks is NOT EVEN CLOSE, not even in the ballpark to what the original intention of the US government was. It is off beyond the outfield, over the green monter, and somewhere off in the bay. It is, in fact, criminal, by all definitions of the term, to distort the function of government so far outside the legal bounds of it's creation.

Re:Brain implants?

[blhack]

I wonder if the brain has a usable life though?
Right now, our brains only last for about 80-100 years.....
I wonder if there would be any strange side effects from giving it 1000 years worth of experience?

If we really did accomplish this, imagine how much faster we could progress technologically......allow devs to drop into one of these things and we could have software that would normally take months to build developed in mere minutes!

Re:This American's view of the internet?

[nyteroot]

Only 11% of respondents said they be willing to safely implant a device that enabled them to use their mind to access the Internet.

Why not? It'd make http://xkcd.com/333/ a lot less awkward..

Re:Brain implants?

[MBGMorden]

Not so strange, eh? (Also, if you want to spend some time experiencing really surreal things, start doing lucid dreaming. It's awesome.) Actually (going a little off original subject here), I have become quite adept at lucid dreaming, kinda out of necessity. I suffer from a sleep disorder known as ASP (Awareness during Sleep Paralysis). As you said when people dream their eyes might follow their actions in the dream, but their BODY generally does not. When you run like crazy in a dream your limbs sit there motionless. The reasoning for this is that the brain shuts down most motor functions during deep sleep (to prevent injury). ASP is a disorder that affects some people where you partially wake up. Your eyes open, your brain "kicks back on", and you become full aware of your surroundings, but for whatever reason some part of your dream remains in a dream-like state. The result is that a) you can't move because your brain still has the paralysis effect in place, and b) because it's still dreaming, your brain will start to superimpose a dream over the existing reality.

Personally during this state before I learned to control it I had episodes where I saw chains holding me down, heard grows coming from the hallway, heard footsteps walking around in the house, felt invisible hands clawing into my stomach, and have seen a zombie like face playing peeka-boo at with me at the foot of my bed. This all looks VERY real, because you can look around the actual room, hear everything that's going on, etc. When the brain needn't render the whole environment it seems to be able to do a great job and rendering "spot detail". Luckily, given that it IS a dream, all rules of lucid dreaming apply, and you can control the environment and keep it non-scary if your are aware of it. It's a nice experience if you know to remain calm and unafraid (if your mind starts drifting you can scare the shit out of yourself if you're not careful, especially if you realize the situation and start thinking "Wouldn't it be really scary if . . . ").

This is actually a very good candidate for explaining lots of supposedly paranormal phenomenon that has been experienced throughout the ages. Look back at so many of the alien abduction reports, ghost sightings/reports, etc, and then look at how many occur with the person in bed and unable to move. A lot of them have that trait in common.

Wiki entry on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis