[Air-l] Google is watching !

Christian Nelson cnelson at comm.umass.edu
Wed May 19 23:30:25 PDT 2004


ET wrote:

> Along comes Little Johnny. He Googles using  "Which I guess excludes 
> socialism, fascism, theocracies, authorianism, etc".  Two results are 
> returned and in seconds Little Johnny knows that in fact it was Barry 
> Wellman who made these comments in the AoIR forum on the 30th of 
> January 2004. He even knows what time of day Barry posted, which could 
> be important. And I can see Arts very interesting reply.
>
> There is no privacy. Changing names of forums or people means nothing.


I made this same point in an earlier discussion of research ethics on 
this list (Sept. 3, 2001) but it doesn't seem to have made much of an 
impression. Kinda funny how we forget the properties of the Net and its 
software--treating it as analogous to face-to-face situations when it isn't.
--Christian Nelson





More information about the Air-L mailing list