Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Monday 28 July 2003, 2:21 PM
Thursday
Thursday 24/07/2003
According to the BBC, a study from New Zealand looking into online sex offences has revealed one of the most unexpected and surprising effects of new technology: young men 'adept at using the Internet' are likely to download and view pornography. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked. The only truly surprising thing that the study could have shown would be if young men adept at Internet usage took longer than 3.5 seconds to locate porn when first given access.
The study is full of good stuff, for example: "The secondary school students in the study tended to be a sexually curious group," and "After the 33 students identified in the study, the next biggest group was the information technology industry and white collar/administrative positions." Which means I'm going to be doubly careful before shaking the hand of our IT Support work experience chap -- but then, one evolves these defence mechanisms quite naturally in this business.
Perhaps in an effort to justify their funding, the study does contain some genuine curiosities. "One offender, who possessed necrophilic images, was professionally involved with funeral directors." That puts a different spin on nice Mr Stiffkey from Walthamstow Co-Operative Funeral Services, I have to say, but I suppose I got into IT because I liked playing with computers so it makes a certain sort of sense.
Although I am the keeper of a seventeen-year-old laptop user and provider of his internet connectivity, I am bound by parental confidentiality and do not wish to dob him in to the rest of the world concerning his patterns of, ah, consumption (oh, OK then. One word. Tentacles.) But he has been watching Six Feet Under with rapt attention...
According to the BBC, a study from New Zealand looking into online sex offences has revealed one of the most unexpected and surprising effects of new technology: young men 'adept at using the Internet' are likely to download and view pornography. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked. The only truly surprising thing that the study could have shown would be if young men adept at Internet usage took longer than 3.5 seconds to locate porn when first given access.
The study is full of good stuff, for example: "The secondary school students in the study tended to be a sexually curious group," and "After the 33 students identified in the study, the next biggest group was the information technology industry and white collar/administrative positions." Which means I'm going to be doubly careful before shaking the hand of our IT Support work experience chap -- but then, one evolves these defence mechanisms quite naturally in this business.
Perhaps in an effort to justify their funding, the study does contain some genuine curiosities. "One offender, who possessed necrophilic images, was professionally involved with funeral directors." That puts a different spin on nice Mr Stiffkey from Walthamstow Co-Operative Funeral Services, I have to say, but I suppose I got into IT because I liked playing with computers so it makes a certain sort of sense.
Although I am the keeper of a seventeen-year-old laptop user and provider of his internet connectivity, I am bound by parental confidentiality and do not wish to dob him in to the rest of the world concerning his patterns of, ah, consumption (oh, OK then. One word. Tentacles.) But he has been watching Six Feet Under with rapt attention...
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