A. Spod on the World Wide Web
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                  Adventure 10 in the collectable series
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This month I have had to do an essay for our Computers in Society lecture.
Professor Notzo Schnell takes it and he is a very interesting person.  He is
almost a part of computing history.

His great grandfather once met Charles Babbage, and suggested a second
application of the great man's computational engine.  By attaching paddles to
pulleys on either side of it, and affixing a square block on the
multidirectional governing pulley, the device could be made to simulate a
simple ball game not unlike Tennis.  Charles reportedly poo-pooed the idea.
He apparently had some ideas about using odd-shaped blocks made of small
squares.

During the second world war Professor Schnell's worked on the Enigma project,
which used small Scottish puppy-dogs attached to police helmets in an attempt
to decode German messages, until Alan Turing suggested they use a computer.

The Professor was also on hand when Sir Barnes Wallace wanted some
calculations done about his proposed bouncing bomb.  Unfortunately the data
from the early computers were not entirely accurate and had to be corrected
during numerous test runs.

We all think he is great, especially as a man who was very obviously of
German heritage but helped us so much during the war.

More recently he was involved at another historic moment of history, when Sir
Clyde Synkhair was developing his ground-breaking TW-80, he needed a random
number algorithm.  He turned to Professor Schnell, now a lecturer in
Spodchester Polytechnic. I must admit when I had a TW-80, it was not terribly
good at getting a random number that wasn't 8, but never-the-less, hurrah for
Professor Schnell, for putting Spodchester Polytechnic (now Spodchester
University) on the map.  (My friend (lesdennis on mono) says "Isn't that the
Ordinance Survey?"  I laughed so much I nearly logged off by accident.)

In our lecture last week, as well as telling us all this again, Mr Schnell
set us an essay, about an important way the computer affects society.  I, and
most other people, have done it about 'The World Wide Web.'  I have
reproduced it here as jarcher, who's dad is a local councillor in
Stockbrokerbelt West, says it is the most interesting article on the Web he
has ever read.  And he should know as he is writing a book called 'Intrigue
on the Internet.'  It's about a labour government closing down all the
science fiction web pages - it's really made me think about politics.


            The World Wide Web and it's implications on society
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                                                   An Essay by Adrian P. Spod

The World Wide Web is like the world's biggest, most up-to date
encyclopaedia.  Where you can find out about any subject from the cast list
of Babylon 5, to news of computing exhibitions.

The Web, as it is affectionately known, covers the whole globe.  More people
use it than read the 'Star Trek Newsletter.'

The Web has gained a bad reputation because of the reported easy availability
of pornography.  But here are a few statistics, I think destroys that
argument.  I have done a survey of some of the people on my course, and here
is the results:

People in survey: aspod (me), nolife, trekki, ivabeard, and a fifth person
who wishes to remain anonymous.  Survey Time: 1 day.

Averages:
  Time on mono:                                 15 hours*
  Time on Web:                                  14 hours*
  Time playing WebTrek and DikMud game:          6 hours*
  Time looking at Star Trek Web Site:            2.2 hours
  Time spent downloading pornographic pictures:  1 hour$
  Time spent on Young Conservative Web Page:     0.1 hour$

* - concurrently.
$ - please note this was only done by one of the people in the survey, but
this is the overall average.


As you can see, by projecting this to the population as a whole, using the
Web to access pornographic pictures is less than half the usage that the Star
Trek Web Site gets.  So that is a victory for culture over pornography.
Although as jarcher says, you can get pornography in nearly every high street
news agents, but I can tell you I have great difficulty in finding Star
Trek News some weeks.  So, I think you'll agree with my conclusion, that 
there is something wrong with society, but not the Web.

                                                           (c) A.Spod 4/12/95