Sven Johnson has just filed another report from the very near future. In this month’s Future Imperfect, he looks at the impact of a massive and deliberate leak of the medical data of ordinary Americans onto the internet.
Tag Archives: internet
Alternate history of Gopher web
Robert Topolski, chief technologist of the Open Technology Initiative suggests that but for a quirk of history we might all be using Gopher instead of Tim Berners-Lee‘s World Wide Web:
By the 1990s, there was just about enough power to allow access to text and image-based files via the internet, and Tim Berners-Lee‘s World Wide Web was born.
But network administrators at the time preferred a streamlined text-only internet service, says Topolski, using something called the Gopher protocol.
He suggested that if those administrators had had access to data filtering technology, like that becoming popular with companies and governments today, they would have used it to exclude Berners-Lee’s invention, and kill off the World Wide Web.
For other glimpses into possible alternate histories of hypertext check out this article in the New York Times about Theodor Holm Nelson’s Project Xanadu. Or even further back check out Memex by hypertext pioneer Vannever Bush.
[from Short Sharp Science][image from James Jordan on flickr]
Sueing Google – how far does the law extend into the internet?
OK, you’ve probably seen this story already, primarily re-reported with a certain muted gloating that someone got one over on the Big G; a guy called Aaron Greenspan has successfully retrieved $721 of AdSense earnings from Google by filing a small claims lawsuit against them after his account was closed without explanation.
This is great news for all the people who fear Google’s monopoly on search, but what bothers me here is the question of whether the spirit of the law that governs an internet user need necessarily prevail in any section of cyberspace said user chooses to use.
I spoke with Adam C. of AdWords once more on the phone. After pointing out that in the United States of America, the accused are generally given the right to know both the crimes they are being accused of, and the identities of their accusers, Mr. C. responded by saying that such thinking did not apply to Google’s terms of service. Effectively, Google’s position was that it was above the law, and if not any law in particular, then at least the spirit of the law.
In this case, the judge disagreed with that stance (though it should be noted that, as it appears above, it has been paraphrased by Greenspan rather than quoted directly). With the inevitable caveat that I am not a lawyer or legal professional, it strikes me that this sort of question will become increasingly important as virtual worlds proliferate.
Let’s say you get burnt in a gold-trading deal in your favourite MMO; who has legal jurisdiction over an exchange that happens entirely electronically? Just how binding is that click-through EULA for the game, or for the trading site? If you’re based in the US but the huckster is based in China, how would you go about prosecuting (if you could at all)? [via The Guardian; image by steakpinball]
Questions like this are a reminder that the internet is still a wild frontier with a whole lot of loopholes. If nation-states are weakening in influence, how will they project the legal protections of their citizens into a space that has no geography?
Doctor, my nays: Physicians strike back at online reviews
Like restaurants and hair stylists, doctors now have to face the public, in the form of reviews posted on the Internet. Some are trying to get patients to sign promises not to post negative comments — or any comments at all. It’s even spawned at least one new business: Medical Justice, in Greensboro, North Carolina, sells a standard waiver agreement.
Patients who sign agree not to post online comments about the doctor, “his expertise and/or treatment.”
It seems like swimming upstream in the Internet age, but let’s do some point/counterpoint:
Some sites “are little more than tabloid journalism without much interest in constructively improving practices,” and their sniping comments can unfairly ruin a doctor’s reputation, [Medical Justice founder Dr. Jeffrey] Segal said….
John Swapceinski, co-founder of RateMDs.com, said that in recent months, six doctors have asked him to remove negative online comments based on patients’ signed waivers. He has refused. “They’re basically forcing the patients to choose between health care and their First Amendment rights, and I really find that repulsive.”…
“Are there bad doctors out there? Absolutely, but this is not a good way to figure it out,” [Chicago gynecologist Lauren] Streicher said.
Ars techica comments:
Review sites will only continue to increase in popularity—though potential customers should always take what they read online with a grain of salt. Instead of fighting the trend, doctors need to embrace the new reality and maybe even use the reviews as an opportunity to improve themselves.
[Image: Scrubs, by ndanger]
O NOES teh webz iz infantilizin yr brainz (yes, again)
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably never heard of Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution. But Lady Greenfield knows all about you, and how your use of social networking sites and computer games is contributing to the ongoing infantilization of the 21st Century psyche:
Arguing that social network sites are putting attention span in jeopardy, she said: “If the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder.
“It might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies over the last decade might in some way be linked to the threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the drug prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.”
[Emphasis mine – try playing the same game with the whole of Lady Greenfield’s output, kids! Should keep your attention for twenty seconds at least.]
Will no one think of the children? God only knows that when a generation grows up with things that its elders didn’t have, the fate of the human race is bound to take a turn for the worse. Just look at the pernicious long-term effects of the printing press, the germ theory of medicine, radio and popular music, and (of course) television… [image by jmr_photo]
It’s unfortunate that we’re so hard-wired for fearing change – no new technology has managed to erase that little character trait yet, it seems. As always, the TechDirt boys do a great job of shredding this week’s sensationalist backlash against Twitter:
It’s pretty clear that none of these folks have ever really used Twitter — because they all seem to interpret it as being a broadcast mechanism, rather than a conversational one. This isn’t to say that Twitter is right for everyone, but most of the people who find value in it, find value in the conversational aspect of it, not that it “broadcasts” mundane facts of their lives. […] There are still plenty of people who hate Twitter, but it’s difficult to take seriously people complaining about it when it seems quite clear they’ve never even bothered to use it.
Quite – now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to post a few naked pictures of myself to Lady Greenfield’s MySpace page. LOLZ