What The Net is Doing to You 174
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.
Political Debate Indeed (Score:2, Interesting)
Surely this kind of study is redundant? (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Disabled (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does this statement make sense? (Score:1, Interesting)
However, knowledge most certainly is control.
Do we have control over technology? I can certainly control my VCR, and I have the ability to stop it from blinking 12:00 if I so choose. (I'm lazy, and rarely do.)
Do we have control over nuclear energy? The average citizen doesn't (Thank goodness!), but I'd argue the fact that nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons, harnessing the power of the atom, demonstrate control.
Who controls the net? Not politicians. Not corporations. Not yet. For the time being, end users still control the net. Why? Knowledge. Look at the RIAA's doomed campaign against file sharing. They can kill Napster, but can they kill Kazaa? If they kill that, can they kill IRC? FTP? HTTP? The cat of knowledge is out of the bag in terms of that battle, and the users have thus won, and are in control.
Biblical Analogy... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
It is not 'deviancy' - it is 'perversion' (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:It is not 'deviancy' - it is 'perversion' (Score:3, Interesting)
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.