From: Christian Weisgerber (naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de)
Date: Thu Feb 17 2000 - 18:37:14 MST
In article <38AB7705.4A06934@ibm.net>, Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net> wrote:
> http://www.looksmart.com/r?lt&iee&panel=news
I don't even know where to start in taking this thing (or at least
what's been reported about it) apart. I wonder whether AP butchered
it, or whether the actual study is as idio^H^H^H^Hflawed as they
make it out to be.
The first problem that jumps right out is that they apparently
didn't observe people's actual behavior but conducted a poll. That's
the easy way out, but the validity of the results is highly
questionable. Your return sample *will* be skewed. Some people will
bullshit you intentionally. A whole lot will report wrong answers
simply because they are insufficiently selfaware.
A lot depends on the actual questions asked. Surveys on/about the
Internet, by students at sociology departments who try to scrounge
together material for a thesis, keep popping up. I've seen a few
questionaires drifting by--typically they were posted to inappropriate
groups on Usenet, already implying the originator's lack of
comprehension of the medium they purport to examine--and there were
far too many questions where I would have had to respond with "not
applicable", "that question doesn't make any sense", "do you want
me to answer what you asked or rather what you actually want to
know?".
> "More time spent online apparently leads to less time spent on
> real life, according to a new study.
I hate to break it to them, but the online world *is* part of the
real world. And already and still increasingly so in ways that even
net-unaware people should be able to understand.
> people who spend more than five hours per week online spend less
Objection! Define "spending time online".
A substantial part of many people's work time, from university work
to office jobs, is spent working with computers permanently connected
to the Internet, no matter whether they actually use any non-local
network services.
Using network services doesn't necessarily correlate to any kind
of connection time. I can spend hours reading and writing E-mail
and Usenet articles without any communications to the outside world
happing during this time. On the other hand, my computers do quite
a bit of network communication without any interaction of mine.
I won't even start about the technical aspects of connectionsless
networks.
> It is one of first to look at the Internet's impact on society.
Sufficiently vague to not make it a lie, although it is clearly
intended to convey an untruthful impression.
> ``The more hours people use the Internet, the less time
> they spend with real human beings,'' said Norman Nie...
As others have already remarked... er, what others... you don't
exist! Go away! Help! The net is full of entities pretending to be
human beings!
No, this is just too silly.
> And I will spare you the rest.
This one's a goodie:
Participants were given Internet appliances and free Internet
access so they could answer the survey questions electronically.
Interesting methodology.
> It did get me to thinking however, what if... somehow our new
> heaven-sent toy were to disappear, and we were to go back to the
> way we were, before the internet.
Well, other than some of the young ones here, I wasn't always on
the net. I do remember. I read more bad books back then.
> What if we had to rely mostly upon our neighbors for social
> contact? I have never felt so alone as when I am at a block
> party with my neighbors. We have so very little to talk about,
> so little in common.
We don't have block parties.
(Don't get me started on neighbors. There are two kinds. Those who
you ignore and who ignore you. Those are the good ones. And there
are those you keep meeting in court. Those are the bad ones.)
I can already see the sociologists slobbering over the ways the
net impoverished my social life. Unfortunately, it didn't. My
off-net social life may be poor, but irrespective of such qualitative
judgment, I can assure you that it's been the way it is for as long
as I remember, i.e. at least since pre-school. That covers about
15 years of pre-net time. And it seems to run in the family.
> Worse still, by the above reasoning, I am spending less time with
> "real human beings", therefore all of you must be... fake human
> beings. Or imaginary human beings. I assume that means ordinary
> humans times sqare root of negative one.
Damn, I was just about to say that. :-)
Maybe I should henceforth go by the name of j*naddy.
> So, our internet addiction is leading to social isolation and... god forbid:
> less TELEVISION! spike
The fun thing is, you can keep pouring these advertising millions
shifted in response from TV into the Internet and they just keep
disappearing. Maybe it's time for a legal initiative to introduce
obligatory Internet billboards.
-- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de
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