Guilty Pleasures

Your heart starts beating faster…

Your breathing becomes heavier…

You can feel your palms getting sweaty…

That vein in your neck begins to pulsate and your whole body is getting tenser with anger…

“AAAARGH!”

Not being able to get online is annoying for most, but for some it can be painfully frustrating.

New research conducted by YouGov for 118 118 has revealed that as a nation we are officially ADDICTED to the internet. The report revealed that around 44% of internet users are left feeling stressed are confused when they lose access to the internet.

Indeed, Dr Jerald Block (a leading psychiatrist who writes for the American Journal of Psychiatry) asserted earlier this year that internet addiction is now a serious public health issue that should be officially recognised as a clinical disorder.

According to Block, internet addiction has four main components:

• Excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives (i.e. forgetting to eat during your online casino marathon)
• Withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible (i.e. wanting to throttle your sister when she is hogging Facebook)
• The need for better computers, more software, or more hours of use (i.e. spending seventeen hours playing World of Warcraft)
• Negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation and fatigue (i.e. “I told you not to look in my private folder!”)

Internet addiction is no joke.

Internet addiction clinics have sprung up around the world and online in an attempt to help people conquer their need for a fix. Indeed, many people have turned (apparently without irony!) to message boards with names such as Internet Addicts Anonymous.

Dr David Lewis, the psychologist who worked on the YouGov study, believes broadband is to blame, suggesting that it is the ever improving availability and affordability of broadband that has fuelled Britain’s obsession with the internet.

Luckily, I have the miracle cures:

• 76% said they could not live without the internet (Simple cure - set yourself free with mobile broadband)
• 19% said they spend more time online than they do with their families each week. (Simple cure - get everyone involved with family friendly broadband)
• 17% said the longest they had been without the internet was less than one day (Simple cure – get unlimited broadband and surf to your heart’s content!)
• 20% pay more attention to the internet than their partners (Simple cure – start dating online and kill two birds with one stone!)
• 17% would miss the internet more than their friends (Simple cure – get a reliable service provider, so you’ll never be without the internet and then, who needs friends?)

So are you really addicted? Well, read the statements below and see how many apply to you…

• When someone tells a funny joke, I say “LOL” instead of laughing.
• I no longer type with punctuation, capitalisation or complete sentences.
• I have an identity crisis if someone is using a screen name that’s similar to mine.
• I double click my TV remote.
• When signing important documents I find myself signing my email address instead of my name.
• The only way my friends and family can really get my attention is with an Instant Message.
• When others are using my computer I pace nervously behind them.
• I reach for my mouse during sleep.

If any of the statements above apply to you then yes, I reckon you are addicted and you have my full permission to FREAK OUT.

*Disclaimer*

This is not a scientific questionnaire. Hazel is a joker, not a psychologist.

  Tron’s Hair Extensions

I read this week the internet could soon be made obsolete due to a superfast alternative built by Cern, the particle physics centre who initially pioneered internet technology nearly twenty years ago.

The new network, know eerily as ‘The Grid’, runs at speeds of up to 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, and has been built with dedicated fibre-optic cables. Capabilities of The Grid include the power to transmit holographic images, and the capacity to allow instant communal gaming to groups of over 100,000 online gamers. That’s some round of Command and Conquer.

However, it was the following piece of information that really captured my attention:

‘The Grid will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.’

Impressive, very impressive.

I’ve just got one quick question: why the hell would you want to do that?

Granted, from 1964 to 1972 they were absolutely on top of their game, no question, ‘Exile on Main Street’ is a modern masterpiece. I’m even prepared to allow side one of ‘Goats Head Soup’ and two tracks from ‘Some Girls’ slip in.

But 80s and 90s Stones, are you insane? You would need a frontal lobotomy to appreciate that stuff, let alone a superfast internet network.

Why are we designing internet networks that can send 33 albums halfway around the world in seconds, when all you need is 6? Perhaps even just a sturdy Greatest Hits might do it? This statistic also pales into insignificance when I tell you it’s possible to download, burn, listen to, evaluate and discard the entire Kate Nash back catalogue in under a nanosecond.

My advice? Get yourself an i-pod that holds eight songs, and download ‘Master of Puppets’ by Metallica. It’s all you need. In previous years, you would have been able to download this album for free from Napster. Unfortunately, the Metallica drummer and co-founder, Lars Ulrich, elected to drag Napster through the federal courts and ultimately destroy them. Oh dear.

Rather than sending duff albums by flamboyantly dressed cadavers (and I’m back onto the Stones now) to Sepang, how could ‘The Grid’ be put to a more practical use?

Well, ironing out glitches in VoIP and IPTV would certainly be one great innovation, as would an increased capacity to run your home security system (CCTV and all) from your PC.

Looking further ahead, holographic video conferencing looks a distinct possibility, creating the illusion that every conference participant is present in the room at the same time. This feeling of physicality between disparate entities would significantly aid communication between businesses, and emphatically crystalise the saying ‘it’s a small world’.

The Grid will ultimately sound the death knell for desktop computing, with the majority of net users turning to online applications to store data. Landline phones (already under threat from the ‘dongle’) and mobile handsets could take a major hit too, with VoiP and social networking all set to replace them on a permanent basis.

Having been in development for seven years, this parallel network is now built, using fibre-optic cables that run from Cern to 11 nerve centres in the United States, Canada, the Far East and Europe. Testing begins this summer.

So, my question to you is this: In the light of iplayer, 4OD and other applications decimating our frail, existing broadband network, how would you use all this extra bandwidth if it was to be introduced tomorrow?

What could you do with 1000Mb?

Answers on a holographically generated e-card please.