Attitude poll about the internet (and cyborgs?)

463.com and Zogby internation released the results of a poll about the attitudes of about 20.000 people concerning the internet. The questions concerned a wide range of subjects ranging from implants to God and significant others.

Two interesting answers were:

- Implant the Internet in Your Brain. 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. Interestingly, men were much more willing than women. Seventeen percent of men said they were up for it while only 7% of women wanted to access the Internet using their mind.

- Kids Chips.
While most Americans don’t want the Internet implanted in their brain, they are more willing to insert a chip into a child 13 or younger to help track them if they are lost, abducted, or just tend not to be where they are supposed to be. Nearly one in five Americans said they would do so to track a child’s whereabouts. Interestingly, there was no difference in opinion among parents who had younger children and those who did not.

So while we're hesistant about subjecting our own brains to implants it is ok for our kids so we can keep an eye on them?

Sources: 463, (Through Read/WriteWeb)

The Citizen Journalist Toolkit

According to Reuthers this kit contains everything a Citizen Journalist would need to survive in the world of newsmaking: a phone (the N95) that's able to go online and has a built-in GPS, a tripod for video interviews, a microphone and a charger working on solar power. How much good that will do in our cloud-covered part of the world is beyond me. But for the citizen journalist operating in the sunnier regions of the world it might be more appropriate.

Sources: Reuters, Nokia

Web 2.0 too clean?

Who can argue that the web 2.0 hype caused websites to look 'too' clean, too shiny and a feeling of plastic all around.

Identity is important. Therefore style and content should go hand in hand to give the surfer the feeling that what you're offering or saying is more unique than the colour/plastic look.

So here some tips:

How to destroy the web 2.0 look.

Does 'Media' equal 'News'?

Is the expression 'The Media' simply another way of saying the News?

- I think not.

Media is the plural of medium, which is a means of conveying a message, a means of communication. A tool which we use many times a day. These media include anything from television, to newspapers, magazines, the internet protocol, billboards etc. There are many more messages being transmitted towards the viewer or the listener than just the news. This includes entertainment, advertising, to be short, any message sent by a sender to a receiver. These receivers can be be many in the case of a few to many model (traditional broadcasting like television or newspapers) or a many to many model (like the internet).

If we continue this line of thinking we are all part of what is commonly referred to as the 'media'. In this age of the internet and the endless possibilities to share our opinions, stories and rants through blogs (There are so many free services like Google Blogger, or Wordpress ...), social networking tools (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, ...), instant messengers (MSN Messenger, AIM, ICQ ...), short message updaters (Twitter) and Wiki's (with for example wikipedia) ... We're all our own publishers, senders of information and sharers of thoughts.

Dictionary entries: Medium, Media

Facebook Employees know what you are doing.

While Facebook doesn't allow the publishing of profiles. They themselves can look at any of them and see everything a user does or who's profile he or she visits.

We users can only see those people's profiles who are our friends. But we shouldn't forget that there's an allseeing eye watching over us. There's a lot of information in these profiles about every user and should we trust coorporations to keep our information safe?

A top US intelligence official says that citizens should change their notion of privacy to match that of their governement. Privacy should be regarded as a framework as a system of laws, rules and customs. Instead people should focus on how the information, that will be gathered anyway, will be safeguarded.

There are fragments of each person spread all over the world. Personal data in governement computers concerning every part of your life. Information about your financial status in banks and financial institutions. And now information about your personal status in the Facebook database.

While Facebook is obviously not the only party we should realise that everything we do can be watched. When will that time come that some people will be able to see everything at once ...

Sources: Valleywag, Ars Technica