The Weekly Round-Up: 27.07.07

Kids these days don't know they're born.

While today's young adults embrace mobile technology, social networking and digital music, they're largely unappreciative of the concept of technology - that's the conclusion of a pair of recent surveys by Microsoft and MTV Networks anyway.

Only a handful of the youngsters surveyed (a whopping 18,000 eight to 24-year-olds) actually think of technology as a 'concept' and the very few kids who actually like technology tend to live in Brazil, China and India.

MTV Networks' Andrew Davidson said: "Young people don't see tech as a separate entity - it's an organic part of their lives."

Word.

This is absolutely bleeding obvious when you think about it. The late Douglas Adams put it rather neatly when he wrote about three ages of technology.

His theory: Any technology which exists when you're born is a perfectly natural way in which the world operates. Most of us would struggle to imagine a world without landlines, electricity or wheels. We take these things for granted.

It's the second and third ages of technology that are more interesting. According to Adams, anything invented when a person is between the ages of 15 and 35 is "new and exciting" and something you could probably get a career in.

Exhibit A: The Weekly Round-Up - a child of the internet, veteran of the dot-com bubble, refugee of the browser wars and part of the generation which dreads the annual Christmas question from elderly relatives, 'So, what is the internet?'

(For the record, the Round-Up's stock answer is 'a bit like the telephone network except with computers'. This usually buys enough time to make a swift escape before the inevitable regression leads to earnest inquiries about the nature of computers, circuits and electricity.)

The third and final age of technology describes how we accept innovations and developments that appear after we turn 35. After this milestone, new stuff is against the natural order of things. It's a cruel fate that new, exciting technologies are foisted upon us at the precise moment we are most ill-prepared and ill-equipped to deal with them - during the inevitable march towards middle age.

Just try and explain the difference between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD to the Round-Up and watch it whimper and try to find some contextual common ground with the VHS/Betamax debate, leading to yet more inter-generational confusion.

Moving on, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organisation announced this week that its $100 notebook, the XO, is going into mass production.

The first mass-produced laptops for schools in developing countries will be available in October. The laptops can be recharged using a rip cord, crank, pedal, car battery or solar panels - in fact, anything that can produce between 10 and 20 volts of electricity. It's a fine project.

The OLPC organisation, headed up by Nicholas Negroponte, claims it has already received more than three million orders for the green-and-white machines, which look like the result of a frantic, drunken coupling between a first-generation Apple iBook and an Etch-a-Sketch. (You can see a photo of the prototype here.)

Given the creative design, the Round-Up wasn't particularly surprised to learn this week that the devices are being used for alternative educational purposes by Nigerian school kids.

The official News Agency of Nigeria claims some of the country's school children who received laptops from a US aid agency have been using them to check out porn websites. And why not? That's what kids all around the world are using their computers for. It's only part of 'being digital', eh Nicholas?

The report claims efforts to complement learning with technology "have gone awry". Armageddon surely follows.

Fortunately, an OLPC representative was on hand to resolve the hormonal and moral crisis spreading like wildfire through the country and stated the laptops would henceforth be fitted with "filters" to block naughty content.

'Oh, sir...'

The adoption and perception of technology by different demographic groups is an interesting subject. Just as interesting is what happens when technology is suddenly and shockingly taken away from the very people who take it for granted.

The 30 million-plus users of social networking site Facebook could be left staring into the abyss as the wrangle over who owns the intellectual rights for the site moves off campus and into the court room.

Three founders of rival site ConnectU are claiming that Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for the website while they were undergraduates at Harvard University.

The lawsuit accuses Zuckerberg of fraud and intellectual property theft and demands that ConnectU be given ownership of Facebook.

Zuckerberg may have regretted not selling up or even courting suitors for the service. Only last year he reportedly turned down a $1bn takeover bid from Yahoo!, and more recently he's had Google's Sergey Brin sniffing around his rear end.

Just how would we cope if a digital prop so prominent in the modern zeitgeist suddenly vanished?

The Round-Up was given a taster of the horrors in store last Sunday thanks to a segment on BBC Radio 4's BH programme about life in the age of social networking.

X had split up with Y over irreconcilable differences in their relationship. X didn't explain why but it was described as an amicable split. A fine oxymoron, if ever there was one.

The 'problem' was what they did about the 'relationship status' in their Facebook profiles. When they changed their profiles status back to single, they were inundated with messages from mutual friends. Plus they were also getting second-hand updates on each other which was all rather upsetting. The horror, the horror.

The Round-Up would like to think the fabric of society could just about remain intact should Facebook fall, as wonderful as it is.

We'd all just go back to complaining about our unhappy love lives through traditional communications - email, instant messaging, mobile phones, landlines, post.

Failing all those we could regress to sending smoke signals. Heck we could even go back to talking to people face to face. No, seriously.

And finally this week, a comprehensive three-year study on the possible short-term health effects of mobile base stations has found no evidence of associations with ill-health. But does the anti-mast lobby believe the results? What do you think?

Many people have claimed mobile phone masts cause symptoms like anxiety, fatigue and nausea. You can see where the confusion has crept in - those symptoms are actually caused by inconsiderate users of mobile phones, not by masts.

The survey used a group of 44 'sensitive' individuals (whatever that might mean) and a control group of 114 people, who can presumably be described as 'insensitive'. Anyway, here comes the 'science' bit.

The study found that, in double-blind conditions (where neither the testers nor the tested knew whether the signal was on or off), the sensitive group reported increased symptoms regardless of whether a 3G or GSM signal was on or off.

This led the researchers to conclude that any physiological responses were unrelated to the signals and that anything the sensitive bunch couldn't deal with or got upset about was therefore their own problem. Or something a bit more scientific than that.

Principal investigator Professor Elaine Fox said this week: "It is clear that sensitive individuals are suffering real symptoms and often have a poor quality of life. It is now important to determine what other factors could be causing these symptoms, so appropriate research studies and treatment strategies can be developed."

She added: "Get a life people." No, no she didn't actually...

Still the sub-text of the good professor's statement does seem to be 'lighten up'. These 'sensitive' individuals - poets, painters, aromatherapists, Mac users, surely - are clearly worried about a whole load of things but mobile masts shouldn't be one of them. Either way, whatever is bothering them, it's not her problem.

We're surrounded by masts and they aren't going away. It's not just the big masts you can see, it's the ones you don't. Under the UK planning laws, masts less than 15 metres high are generally built without express permission unless the council particularly objects. So there are probably thousands of masts you never see, tiny microcells and teeny picocells pumping out five bars of signal-strength goodness all around us.

OK, the Round-Up really isn't helping here, is it?

Anti-mast lobby group Mast Sanity isn't buying the new study. It's accused the researchers of "unethical" behaviour for exposing their volunteers to harm. Harm which this study proves to be non-existent. We're not really getting anywhere with this, are we?

The study only explored at the short term effects of mobile masts. Who should we look to to study the long-term effects of exposure to mobile signals?

That's right, the youth of today. The same ones that - if you remember - consider technology to be an invisible, integral part of modern life. The ones that rarely acknowledge technology as a 'concept' and when they do generally have no interest in it.

Mobile mast health risks? Bovvered?

The choice is yours. You could either stop worrying about it or you could join a lobby group and fear the evil radio waves in the sky.

Until next week, one thing that isn't going to melt your brain or fry your skin is the Weekly Round-Up podcast. At least the Round-Up doesn't think it will. It hasn't really done any research on the matter. Take a risk here.

And don't forget to flex your funny muscle in this week's Caption Competition.

Congrats to reader Mike Parmley for providing the winning entry to last weeks's competition.