Ch9 Broader Issues

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Ch9 Broader Issues
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Community or Isolation?
Many people feel that the impact of computers on
community, social, and interpersonal interaction
is negative and will get worse. Will on-line
shopping kill real stores and eliminate the need
for community-based professionals? Will the
effluent pull back on support for local schools
and public services?
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Community or Isolation?
Will the ability to do so many things from home
(shop, vote, bank, etc.) cut down on people to
people interaction and result in a de-emphasis
in the importance of community? Are there
factors other than technology that offer greater
threats to the concept of community ? Have
these other factors already killed the sense of
community?
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How Do You MeasureCommunity?
It has been suggested that a good measure of
community is the number of organizations that
people join and are active in. Unlike studies of
the early 90s, recent studies tend to indicate
that this is not a problem.
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What About Isolation?
There was a real concern about what the impact
of the telephone would be. It was feared that it
would negatively impact peoples ability to talk
face to face. Many people are reporting that
e-mail correspondence has allowed them to keep in
touch with the modern dispersed family.
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Return to Mayberry?
Since the early 80s there has been a move from
the cities to the suburbs or smaller
communities. It has been hypothesized that it
is technology that has given us ability to
remotely compute and communicate that has made
this possible.
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Blacksburg Electronic Village
BEV was put in operation in Oct of 93 as a
partnership between the town of Blacksburg,
Virginia Tech, and Bell Atlantic to improve
community networking service to the level
available on the Virginia Tech campus. Bell
Atlantic installed a switch and a T1 line to the
library and several hundred apartments while
Virginia Tech provided personnel for
management/development.
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Blacksburg Electronic Village
By 1996, 45 of the population had access to
BEV. All 20 local schools, 14 local news groups,
more than 100 community groups and 200
businesses maintained BEV sites. Most active of
the community groups were the seniors, the
Islamic Center, and the arts council. User
surveys consistently find the principle uses of
the network are learning and teaching (35 of
all traffic), civic interests, social relations,
support for work or business, consumer
information, entertainment, and medical
services.
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Blacksburg Electronic Village
Users/uses include Church groups, mountain
bikers club, florist, travel agents, doctors,
current issues forums,etc. Neat applications
include a virtual science lab (4 schools and the
university), a virtual science fair, MOOsburg (a
multi-user model of the city), and a
collaborative history of the city project,
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Blacksburg Electronic Village
Want to claim success integrating distinct and
sometimes conflicting views. The vision of wide
access and participation, well-developed but
somewhat insular subcommittees,
entrepreneurial initiative, and independently
originated new applications and service are not
always compatible. After 3 years accesses to BEV
were approaching 250,000 per month.
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Computer Addiction
This is a real problem. Computer games have
knocked more than a few students out of college.
You might have noticed that old-timers tend to
get hooked on Solitaire. (or e-bay)
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Cybersex
Stanford study published 4/99 in Professional
Psychology Research and Practice 9 million
people a day log on to the Internet for sexual
pursuits. 8 were determined to be sexually
compulsive because they spent more than 11 hours
a week on cybersex and felt it interfered with
their lives.
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Cybersex
60 admitted to lying about their age. 40
admitted to lying about their race. 47 were
married. The three As of the Internet
affordability, accessibility, and anonymity.
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Problems with Stanford Study

• If all of these people admit to lying then at
• least that number does. Why believe them now?
• 2. Since when does not feeling you have a
• problem mean that you don't have one?
• 3. Arbitrary selection of hours needed to be
• addicted.
• 4. Sample size not given or details on how data
• collected.

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Who gets hooked?
Studies have reported that Internet addicts tend
to have the personality that leads to addiction
and it is probable that if they were not
addicted to the Internet then there would be
something else such as gambling, drug abuse, etc.
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Information Haves andHave Nots
A family with a college education and earning
over 50,000 is five times as likely to have a
computer as one with non-graduates earning less
than 30,000. Over half of the children of
college graduates use a computer at home while
only 17 of children in homes where the parents
have high school education or less do. Are
colleges with poorly supported computer labs
even playing fields?
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Communications Act of 1934
Under the universal service guarantee found
in the act, telephone companies are required to
provide telephone service to poor people at low
rates, subsidized by other customers. Do we
need to extend this principle to the NET? CPSR
argues that in an information-driven society the
answer is yes.
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CPSR Universal Access
According to CPSR, Universal Access requires 1.
A place where everyone can go to get access. 2.
Easily used equipment. 3. Training in the use of
hardware and software. 4. Affordable access. 5.
Access to the full range of features.
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"Larry Irving Digital Divide Lives, Few People
Care"Newsbytes (04/18/02) MacMillan, Robert
Speaking at the ACM sponsored Computers Freedom
and Privacy 2002 conference in San Francisco,
Privacy Council chief strategist and former U.S.
Commerce Undersecretary Clarence "Larry" Irving
accused both the federal and private sectors of
indifference in bridging the digital divide
between the Internet haves and have-nots. He
noted that 60 percent of African-Americans and
70 percent of Hispanic-Americans lack Internet
access. http//www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176000.h
tml
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The Market's Role
Competition and technical developments have
combined to really drop the price. Initially
new technology carries a high price tag. Are we
talking about Haves and Have laters?
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Are Computers Hurting Education?
There is a growing number of teachers that are
expressing concerns about the decline in
student performance in classes while standardized
test scores indicate stronger students. Students
seem to think, learn, and visualize differently
than their peers of earlier years. Independent
thinking has been replaced by double
clicking. Haim Baruh, Last Word, ASEE Prism.
Oct 2001, p68.
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Are Computers Hurting Education?
An extensive study Educational Testing
Service (ETS) study of more than 6,000
fourth-graders and 7,000 eighth-graders found
that while higher- order thinking skills are
affected positively by the frequency of computer
use, lower-order thinking skills are affected
negatively. The study, which looks at both home
and school use of computers, concluded that home
use of computers has a positive effect, but the
net effect of school computer use is
negative. Haim Baruh, Last Word, ASEE Prism.
Oct 2001, p68.
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Political Freedom
The case for more what happened in Russia,
Tiananmem Square, etc., electronic newspapers
and relayed e-mail, full text of bills
available. Counter examples Government of Iran
avoiding "cultural contamination" from U.S.
television. Singapore doing similar with the
web. China using firewalls to block certain
Internet sites. Viet Nam keeping certain
political thoughts out.
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"War on E-Mail Spam Ratchets Up in Courts,
Legislatures"Christian Science Monitor (4/18/2)
P. 1 Marks, Alexandra
Much effort is currently underway to control
the proliferation of spam, including federal
legislation, new blocking technology, and a
federal crackdown on illegal spammers. States
have lead the way in the fight against
unsolicited email, as businesses in the 20
states that have already passed anti-spam laws
have filed dozens of cases against spammers.
Experts estimate that billions of dollars are
lost due to spam, since it takes up computer
server space and employees' time in deleting the
messages.
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Predictions from the Past
"I think there is a world market for maybe five
computers." (Tom Watson, Chairman IBM
1943) "Computers in the future may ... only
weigh 1.5 tons." (Popular Mechanics,
1949) "There is no reason for any individual to
have a computer in their home." (Ken Olsen,
President DEC, 1977)
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Predictions from the Past
No one will need more than 640K of
memory. (Bill Gates)