Web for "good" purpose or "less good" purpose...

[Michael Ledwidge]

On Mon, 11 Sep 1995, Steve Thomas wrote:
> > 
> > Question:  what does it mean when a government in a democratic society 
> > [...]
> > invasive projects such as the Nielsen data collection and the 
> > 
> forgive me, but do I detect a note of paranoia here? The Edupage item
> seems to be simply about market research, and every Web provider is
> certainly going to be interested in the how/when/who of access to their
> service. This does not in itself appear to me to be either sinister or
> invasive. Of course, what the subscriber does with the information could
> become invasive (e.g. unsolicited email of large and unintereting press
> releases would, in my book, be invasive).

In any case, there is nothing new about any of this. As long as
information has been gatherered, it has been put to less than palatable
usages. Still, if this thread must continue, check out the article on
Equifax in the Sept. 95 issue of Wired magazine. Paranoia is scalable.

Cheers,
	.M.

***********************************************************************
                                        Michael Ledwidge
                                        http://www.nla.gov.au/hype/
                                        National Library of Australia