United Academics Magazine - June 2011 by United Academics

Should we delay making b

Digital Sloth

The Poor Must Be Lazy

Hundred Years of Sloth

Book Reviews

CONTENTS

Remarkable Research

And other things people believe about poverty

abies?

Credits Editor-in-Chief Anouk Vleugels Executive Editor Mark Fonseca Rendeiro

more pictures coming tomorrow

Editorial Bendert Katier, Elke Weesjes, Daphne Wiersema Design Michelle Halcomb Advertisement Send an e-mail to advertising @united-academics.org Questions and suggestions Send an e-mail to redactie @united-academics.org Address Warmoesstraat 149, 1012 JC Amsterdam Website www.united-academics.org

EDITORIAL

Don´t Cry Cucumber It’s the cucumbers. No, wait; the tomatoes. Or not. Maybe the bean sprouts? Normally researchers are hesitant when it comes to making statements. Scientific research is often criticized for being a slow process. Last month, however, when people in Germany started dropping like flies, science got way ahead of itself. Sure, the outbreak of EHEC which has already killed 47 people and caused about 4000 contaminations, was alarming. But so was the way the public was informed. Conclusions were drawn prematurely, scapegoats were named and 36 million kilos of innocent cucumbers, tomatoes and bean sprouts were destroyed. The financial damage: 350 million euro. There’s a reason research takes time. Hypotheses need to be formulated, tested, and then tested again, before any conclusions can be drawn. Even when conducted in a state of crisis. Doing so will not only eliminate the chances of being wrong, but also maintain credibility. It’s like the Boy Who Cried Wolf. If we keep making false assumptions, no one will believe us when we’re actually telling the truth.

Anouk Vleugels, Editor-in-Chief

War, Memory and Biography part II - Commemoration & Representation Love and Loss in the First World War - Sarah Haybittle Remembering Those Who Have Fallen - Daniel Alexander & Andrew Haslam Bittersweet Experiences of the London Blitz - Steve Spencer Leni Riefenstahl - Oscar Broughton & Elke Weesjes Stereotypes in Post War German War films - Richard McKenzie

The DutchTelecom corporation KPN is struggling to keep their revenue up because their customers choose free applications as Skype for calling and WhatsApp for texting. Furthermore mobile broadband use is exploding worldwide and rapidly testing the limits of network capacity, leaving these same providers with having to invest in order to keep up with this rapid growth. Instead of operators seeking new business models to keep up with demand and to ensure further investments in their networks, they often decide to block or find a way to put a price tag on mobile applications that compete with their own services. As a direct result of this, two weeks ago the Dutch parliament decided that the behavior of blocking out content was undesirable, and passed a vote on net neutrality making the Netherlands the second country in the world where telecom providers can’t charge extra for certain mobile services, hereby safeguarding the open Internet. On Nu.nl the Dutch minister of financial affairs, Maxime Verhagen, commented that utilizing outdated business models to generate revenue in this way, not only hinders new developments, but is also “completely wrong.” What is it with companies that, when con6

fronted with rapid changes, cling to their established business models while the market very obviously urges them to change? Stubbornness The situation KPN got itself into seems quite similar to what happened to Motorola back in 1990 when the mobile phone market was on the brink of tipping over in favor of digital technology. Motorola, who was a well established market leader back then, was convinced that their analog technology was far superior to anything else. Meanwhile, digital technology enabled companies to fix their spread costs and expand their user base with few constraints, leading to lower subscription fees for their customers. The mobile market was screaming out for digital mobile technology, yet Motorola didn’t listen to their customers, nor they did listen to the network providers. Motorola’s management was so tied up believing in their own superiority that they even sold the patents to digital technology to competitors like Nokia and Ericsson, who made handsome profits from it. When they eventually realized that they were wrong , they did not respond in a calm or balanced way. Instead they adopted aggressive and alienating business practices,

trying to force their product onto an unwill- nects to the router that isn’t a FON member. ing public. Competitors of KPN such as British Telecom and SFR in France have already embraced Deep packet inspection this crowd-sourced version of WiFi, supplyToday the tables are turned and it’s not a ing their customers with wireless routers mobile phone company, but a network com- and auto-connection apps for smart phones. pany that is adopting a questionable strategy Since KPN also provides fixed broadband serin the face of new developments. While they vices, crowd-sourcing part of that connecdon’t try toforce us to buy their products, tion seems to be an especially potent way to they do require us to reveal what we use our extend their network. data for, using a technique called deep pack- The question remains: Why don’t comet inspection. To understand how this tech- panies like KPN listen to what their customnique works, I imagine that the water com- ers want and look at what their competitors pany would suddenly put a different price in other markets are doing? Being a market tag on water to brew your coffee with versus leader today does not guarantee you will be water you use to take a shower. On top of in the same position tomorrow, nor should that, imagine they would install a camera in it lead to complacency or arrogance. New your house to measure how much water you KPN CEO, Eelco Block announced last month use for what; that’s the equivalent of what that they would lay off between 4000 -5000 deep packet inspection is. people, mostly in management and back of KPN management apparently hadn’t fice positions. Perhaps once of his other inirealized that if you sell wireless mobile tiatives should be to hire some people that broadband, people will actually use it for actually question the status quo. to help KPN communication purposes. Furthermore the get out the self-perpetuating cycle of lazy communication applications people use via corporate insanity. broadband are free services like Twitter, Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Foursquare, E-mail etc. Somewhere along the way KPN strayed By Bendert Katier from the business model which was offering network connectivity and related services on a monthly subscription, not deciding which online services are available for their customers. Lazy corporate insanity New developments in the world of digital communication could be used as an opportunity to innovate and broaden services. Spain based FON, for example, has a unique service where they encourage users to share part of their WiFi at home and get free roaming at one of their other 4 million FON Spots worldwide. Furthermore FON users can subsidize the cost of their monthly broadband with funds from whomever con7

The Poor Must Be Lazy And other things people believe about poverty

If someone is poor they could do something about it if they really wanted to. Poverty has to do with bad luck. Poverty is systemic, it is a cycle that is almost impossible to break. That some people are poor is just how our world works. - These are the kinds of statements researchers have been measuring to determine how people from different parts of the world and of different backgrounds view poverty. The outcome of their research will be essential for the development of social policies and methods which address poverty, today and in the future. If citizens believe the poor have only to look within themselves to improve their situation, they might then vote and support politicians who advocate cutting social services and benefits. If citizens believe poverty is due to injustice or economic forces that are so powerful the poor cannot escape their reality, they might push for more intervention by the government, to help alleviate poverty. Despite the fact that statistics are kept to help indicate poverty rates and trends, the very basic and unscientific personal perceptions people have regarding poverty can be just as influential when it comes to choosing policies and priorities in dealing with it. 8

Injustice or lack of willpower Where you live may not necessarily determine how you look at poverty. More specifically, if you think that poverty can be escaped, if it is a temporary situation or something permanent. In Barrientos and Neff’s “Attitudes Toward Chronic Poverty in the Global Village” (2010) people surveyed in Western Europe had a similar outlook on poverty as people in East Asia: people living in poverty have a chance of getting out of it. By contrast, in that same study, more respondents in South America and SubSaharan Africa responded that the poor don’t have a chance of getting out of their situation. It is therefore no coincidence that a decade after most of this data was collected, we have seen the rise of popular candidates championing the cause of the poor throughout South America. As Armando Barrientos, Professor and Research Director at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester, explains: “In developing countries, governments that address the issue of poverty seem to get much greater political support. Poverty and social issues are becoming much more important in terms of internal domestic policy discussions and in the political cycle.” Indeed recently elected President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, just this month announced that her government’s number one priority would be to eradicate extreme poverty reduction through a $12.5 billion-a-year program called “Brazil Without Poverty.” In the more economically developed world attitudes towards poverty seem to be going in a different direction. While South Americans might be focused on poverty as something that cannot be changed without some kind of government intervention, many Europeans either blame the individual or have come to flat out accept poverty as a natural consequence of modern life. According to Eurobarometer Survey Data from 2007, 37% of European Citizens cite “injustice in society” as the reason for poverty. 20%, meanwhile, believe it is caused by “laziness and lack of willpower.” “An inevitable part of progress” was

cited by 13%, which was still lower then the 19% who cited “Unluckiness” as an answer to why people are poor. Wellfare Queens Perceptions of poverty, even if they are extremely prevalent, are not necessarily based on fact. Widely referenced and repeated stories about poor people abusing social assistance and receiving excessively high benefits get amplified in the public sphere. These examples have a bigger impact than actual poverty statistics which often reveal them to be less prevalent or detrimental then they are said to be. One of the most referenced examples that is still used in discussions of poverty today is the image of the “welfare queen,” made famous during a 1976 campaign speech by then candidate Ronald Reagan. He spoke about an alleged African American women who lived in Chicago who lived like a queen using fraudulently acquired money from a long list of social programs. Welfare Queens became a rallying cry for anyone who believed or wanted others to believe that too many African American women were living handsomely by abusing social programs. Long after statistics and reports pointed out that neither women nor African Americans represented the largest groups on welfare in the United States, the idea that this type of abuse was a rampant problem lived on. In a survey of British attitudes regarding government spending taken in 1990, 52% agreed that social security benefits were “too low.” When asked the same question in 2008, only 21% agreed. (Curtice 2010) Either the British government had drastically boosted social security in the course of 18 years and 2 recessions, or some other factors such as media and political reporting on welfare-queen-style stories had made their mark on the public. As Peter Dorey concludes in his 2010 article “A Poverty of Imagination”: “concern about social security fraud and ‘benefit cheats’ continues to elicit far more media coverage, public condemnation and governmental attention than tax evasion by corporations and the rich, even 9

though the latter actually entails much larger cause a large amount of people think the poor sums that welfare abuse and thus indirectly are lazy, doesn’t mean that they are. Public costs the British taxpayer far more.” perceptions are proven to have little link with real statistical reality. What limited research Age, sex and political ideology that has been carried out reveals that views If it isn’t geography or culture, what other in- on why people are poor can not easily be genfluences shape how poverty is viewed? In the eralized. People living in the economic boom Global Village study, it was found that age and times of East Asia in the 1990’s saw poverty as sex played some role, as both older and female something you could get out of. Do they still respondents were more likely to see poverty as feel that way in 2011? You might be a catholic chronic. Not surprisingly they also found that in Germany or England and see poverty as an political ideology can influence a person, as acceptable side effect of our economic system, those who saw themselves as on the left also while a catholic in Brazil might see poverty as viewed poverty as systemic. On the other hand injustice that cannot be escaped without some the European Union data shows that young kind intervention. In an era where few in the people and students are more likely to view so-called developed world believe in the ability poverty as a personal fault that can be over- of their government to do anything right, it is come. A curious opinion from a group that, al- not surprising that they view poverty as either though young and presumably energetic, are something that can’t be changed or something also frequently accused of being lazy or cod- that only the individual person can do somedled. What one might deduce from such results thing about. Meanwhile in the so-called deis that the older you are, the more years of life veloping world, we have popular movements you’ve experienced, the more you’ve seen how that have elected political leaders promising poverty exists and changes or does not change to make alleviating poverty a government priover time. This life experience, which young ority. Beyond needing more research to betpeople are students have not had, leads to the ter understand poverty perceptions what is conclusion that poverty is systemic above all. also clear is that something has to be done to Yet despite these few conclusions, re- bridge the gap between reality and opinion. searchers across the board have pointed to limited data and a lack of longer term research By Mark Fonseca Rendeiro which looks into influences as well as changes in poverty perception. This lack of long term research makes it difficult to understand, for example, how economic downturns over the last 100 years have (if at all) influenced poverty perceptions; are people living in bad economic times more inclined to say the poor are lazy or are they more likely to see it as injustice brought on by the economic system. Who are you calling lazy? One thing is certain, just be10

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Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star 13

New York, US

Nijmegen, the Netherlands

New York, US

German POW’s, Norway

Uppsala, Sweden

Boston, US

Atlanta Pop Festival, US

Nairobi, Kenya

Jodhpur, India

Nanjing, China

SHOULD WE DELAY

Imagine you are a 28 year old woman. You have fin and a 6 month stint in Thailand, you have now lan logical clock is ticking. Shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you consider h footsteps of celebrity mummies and have a baby at

Biology

Econo

Y MAKING BABIES?

nished your degree and after a few meaningless jobs nded the perfect job. But wait! Tik-Tok, your biohaving a baby first? Or do you want to follow in the 40?

omics

Sociology

Biology Last March a 63-year-old Dutch woman, Tineke Geesink, gave birth to a daughter, becoming the oldest-ever new mother in the Netherlands. Tineke’s case might be extreme but although it is common knowledge that there are huge risks associated with childbearing over the age of 40, more and more women choose to start their families later in life.

Women in the western world are putting off having children until their 30s. In the mid1980s about eight percent of women who got pregnant were over 40 whereas now that figure has more than doubled to 19 percent. A dangerous development according to leading obstetricians and fertility specialists. The British Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says it is increasingly difficult for women to become pregnant after the age of 35. Those who do, face a higher risk of miscarriage. The college specifies the ‘optimum age’ for childbearing between 20 and 35. It is a biological fact- the older you are the harder it is to get pregnant. Celebrity mummies Being an older mother in Hollywood seems to be the norm rather than the exception. Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman and Salma Hayek are all part of the rapidly increasing 40+ mum club. They are a bad example for women, according to Mandish Dhanjal, a consultant obstetrician who has collected evidence

on medical risks for the British Royal College. He notes: “I am worried that older celebrity mothers could be unduly affecting women’s perception of motherhood in later life.” Louise Silverton, deputy general secretary of the British Royal College of Midwives also signals the same problem and adds: ‘Pregnancy complications can be more common in older women: They have higher rates of induction of labour and caesarean births, which present greater risks to both mother and baby.’ Recent research also links babies with a low birth weight and even, in those women who go on to have girls, future fertility problems for them as well. Furthermore the increase in older mothers also poses a financial drain on hospitals and health insurance companies because they have to deal with a growing number of women at higher risk of medical complications. Considering this, actress Sarah Jessica Parker’s much discussed decision to hire a surrogate tot do the bearing for her, doesn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

Economics As we’ve seen, doctors, midwives and others disapprove of older mothers. They see them as a problem to be solved or a trend to be halted. Maybe physically it is better to have children at a younger age, but new research provides evidence that children born to mothers in their late 30s perform better than those whose mothers were in their teens and 20s.

The study, undertaken by Andrew Leigh and Xiaodong Gong from the Research School of Economics, estimated the relationship between maternal age and child outcomes and used indices aimed at measuring overall outcomes, learning outcomes and social outcomes. In all cases, they found evidence that children of older mothers perform better on all levels. Older = Wiser It seems to make sense, older mothers tend to be more educated mothers. Many older parents emphasise that when they were in their 20s, much time was spent being focused on one’s career. As people grow older they are able to invest more time in their children’s development. In January, Elizabeth Gregory, author of Ready: Why Women Are Embracing the New Later Motherhood contributed an Op-Ed article on the subject, in which she cheered for tighter belts, later bumps. She notes “Women have discovered that holding off on kids provides a shadow benefits system in a nation whose policies aren’t very family friendly. Waiting to have 28

children until we’ve finished our educations and established ourselves at work translates into higher wages in the long-term (one study found a 3% wage boost per year of delay, and others have found even greater returns). Gaining job experience and your employer’s trust pays off in more of the flexibility that helps families thrive.” In addition, according to Gregory, “kids benefit from increased maternal education and clout.”. Susan Heitler, a family and marriage therapist, also sees pluses for couples who wait: “Parents in their 40s are often more focused on their children than younger parents,” she points out. “They’ve had time to travel and to have a broad range of experiences before having children. They have less financial pressure, and more of a ‘been there, done that’ attitude towards hard partying and 60-hour working weeks.”

Sociology MTV’s hitshow Teen Mom follows teenage mothers and focuses on themes of changing relationships, specifically, those of the family, friends, couples and school. The show makes it painfully clear that young parents have to go through so many struggles to raise their children. The latest sociology research shows that not only teenagers but young parents in general are often unhappy. Mikko Myrskylä and Rachel Margolis, both researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, also agree that we should have babies later. They have published a new study on parenting and happiness in the latest issue of the journal “Population and Development Review.” In their research, based on a survey of over 200,000 women and men in 86 countries conducted from 1981 to 2005, they show that the satisfaction of young parents decreases with their number of children, while older parents are happier than their childless peers are. The more children young parents have, the unhappier they are. From age 40 on, however, it is the other way round. Then, more children generally means more happiness. Ending the children-make-you-happy myth What is particularly interesting about Myrskylä and Margolis’ research is that the above is true independent of sex, income, or partnership status. Their study shows a global trend and clarifies for the first time the discrepancy between the widespread belief that children bring happiness and the fact that most research finds either a negative or no significant relationship between parent30

hood and wellbeing. “Seeing the age trend of happiness independent of sex, income, partnership status and even fertility rates shows that one has to explain it from the perspective of the stage of a parent’s life,” says Myrskylä. Another study into young mothers and happiness, published in 2004 and undertaken by Rex E. Culp, Mark I. Appelbaum, Joy D. Osofsky and Janet A. Levy, has a similar outcome. Their research shows that younger mothers are less happy about being pregnant and had less social support. These mothers also reported less support from the father of the child. All in all it becomes clear that, although doctors specify the ‘optimum age’ for childbearing between 20 and 35, if you want to be a happy parent with intelligent children you shouldn’t listen to your biological clock until you reach 35. A clear message for the 28 year old woman: stop worrying: take that job and enjoy your career.

Book & Review The Filter Bubble What The Internet Is Hiding From You

The Poisoner’s Handbook

Eli Pariser

Deborah Blum

The internet is our gateway to the world, right? Wrong! In fact, via smart algorithms, the information the internet is showing you mirrors your own personality, preferences and behaviour. The result of this tailoring and personalization of information, according to Eli Pariser, instead of confronting us with new ideas, perspectives and people, the internet locks us into our own small world; our own, unique filter bubble. Eli Pariser’s book describes how companies are tracking your every click and gathering your personal information in order to shape the content we see on our browsers. Thus, rather than bringing us objective news and confronting us with new ideas and viewpoints, the internet only shows us information that it determines is relevant for us. For instance, someone interested in politics and society who googles Egypt, will get information on the recent civilian protests, while another person will get travel information and ads for accommodation. Or, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg states: “A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.” Eli Pariser uncovers how this hidden personalised web threatens to control how we consume and share information as a society, and then shows us what we can do about it. GET IT HERE 32

Although poison murders may seem like ancient history, a recent forensic investigation by Kees Das suggests that within a sample of 100 ‘natural deaths’ in Amsterdam, 2 were in fact poison murders. Thus renewing our interest in poison. In ‘The Poisoner’s Handbook,’ Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Deborah Blum describes the history and workings of different poisons, such as arsenic and carbon dioxide, while also telling the fascinating story of how forensic science emerged in New York City. The Poisoner’s Handbook focuses on the careers of Manhattan’s first professional medical examiner, Dr. Charles Norris, and its first toxicologist, Alexander Gettler. In an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime, they developed forensic science. Besides stories of poison laced pies, faked car accidents and factory workers with crumbling bones, the book also describes how a poison finds its way in the human body and how its presence can be detected. The book contains many fascinating and nice-to-know facts. For instance, Radium, which we now know is radio-active, was actually considered good for your health in the 1920s and was mixed in as part of health drinks, medicine and face-creams!

GET IT HERE

At Home

The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us

Bill Bryson

Most history books cover wars and battles, kings and queens, and in his previous book, the bestselling ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ Bryson tried to cover nearly everything. In his new book ‘At Home’ Bryson chose a smaller theme. ‘At Home’ focuses on the lives of ordinary people in their homes, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. The book reads as a collection of essays, each one focused on a different room in the house. However, the room is only the starting point for what comes next because Bryson wanders loosely from topic to topic with many digressions. While some readers may find that they need a bit more structure, the fact is, Bryson is a fantastic story-teller. The reader learns about a wide range of topics such as the evolution and development of light and energy sources; food; bedding; bathing; waste management; architecture as a profession; the making of window glass; building materials such as concrete, and why the development of the fire-place led to the development of the second floor. This book is an ode to the ordinary and overlooked things of everyday life in the home.

GET IT HERE

Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons

Before reading further, watch this video on YouTube. The video represents a famous test of selective attention. In it is a group of people playing basketball. Your task is to count the number of passes by the white team. While focusing on the white team and counting their passes, most people fail to see a gorilla (!) moving and even waving amongst the players. This is called ‘inattentional blindness’. The ‘invisible’ gorilla is the starting point and overarching metaphor of this book. The authors describe how we may think we see the world as it really is, but that we are actually missing a lot. They focus on attention, perception, memory, and reasoning, showing us how our own intuitions are often wrong. We find out why a company would spend billions to launch a product that its own analysts know will fail, what criminals have in common with chess masters and why money managers could learn a lot from weather forecasters, amongst others. This book really is an eye-opener and teaches us how we are beset by everyday illusions and how these illusions shape our behavior and the choices we make as individuals and as a society. But bewarereading this book implies admitting that you are also often wrong! But hey, aren’t we all? GET IT HERE 33

emarkable e s e a r c h

MEDICINE

THE HEART CAN BE TRIGGERED TO REPAIR ITSELF Promising new research suggests that the heart may be triggered to repair itself. Researchers, who used mice, hope the new treatment will be available for humans within the next five years. Although many advances have been made in preventing people from having a heart attack, the damage a heart attack causes to the heart – due to lack of oxygen, cells die – is permanent. When the damage is severe, the heart has to be helped with mechanical devices or a new heart has to be transplanted. However, research on mice published in the journal Nature, suggests that this damage can be undone. The researchers targeted particular cells found in the outer layer of the heart, called the epicardium. These ‘dormant’ cells, referred to as epicardium-derived progenitor cells (EPDCs), are known to be able to transform into a number of specialist cells, including heart muscle, in developing embryos. Scientists thought the ability of these progenitor cells to transform into specialised cells, was lost in adulthood. But by treating the healthy hearts of adult mice with a molecule called thymosin beta 4, they were able to trigger the heart to repair itself after being damaged. 34

After causing heart attacks in the primed mice, the researchers also gave them a booster dose of thymosin beta 4 and this prompted the EPDCs to transform into cardiomycytes, and integrate with existing heart muscle. The function of the damaged heart went up by 25 %. Researchers will now explore how these effects can be translated into humans.

PSYCHOLOGY WHO’S AFRAID OF RED, GREEN AND BLUE? We stop for red lights. In many sports the misbehavior of a player results in a red penalty card. Research has shown that – in competitive sports – teams playing in red uniforms often fared better, scoring more points than teams that wore blue uniforms. The color red seems to bear a universal meaning. Research now shows that this meaning may be rooted in evolution. A couple of scientists at Dartmouth College set out to investigate the evolutionary roots of the human perception of the color red. In order to do so, they took a closer look at male rhesus macaques roaming freely in Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico. Like humans, rhesus macaques are able to discern red, blue and green.

Two researchers, one male and one female, approached the monkey colony and found isolated males to test. Both approached the monkey with a tray, knelt down and put the tray in front of them. Then, they drew anapple slice from their backpacks, held it at chest level for the monkey to see and then placed the apple on their tray. Next, they both stood up and took two steps back. Typically, the monkey took the apple slice he wanted and ran off to eat it someplace else. However, their behaviour was influenced by the color shirt and cap that the experimenters wore. The shirts and caps worn by the researchers were either red, green or blue. There were four conditions: red on the woman, green on man; then vice-versa; red versus blue; blue versus green. The results showed that the monkeys didn’t mind the researchers’ sex, nor the colours green and blue. However, monkeys steered clear of whoever was wearing red. The researchers believe that this aversion to red reflects an evolutionary adaptation where red signals ‘no.’

COMPUTER

the oldest Internet discussion platform, and is currently exploring patterns of communication in newer social networking services, such as Twitter. The results showed that only two percent of those who start a discussion attract 50 percent of the replies. However, only 12 percent of the content that these popular people posted on the net presented their own comments and opinions. Most of the time, they simply imported content from other news sources or blogs and personal sites. 15 percent of posts used content from online-only news sites, and six percent of posts used content from government and nonprofit organizations. Hence, those who start discussions do not necessarily bring new content to the net. Furthermore, Himelboim found out that as the discussion group became larger, just like in offline life, they also became more hierarchical. People exhibit what’s called a preferential attachment toward those with many connections, which suggests that having many connections makes it easier to make more connections. For those having fewer connections, making new connections will be more difficult. Hence, the internet seems to foster inequality.

INTERNET NOT EGALITARIAN If you thought internet fosters equality, you’re wrong. New research suggests that online discussion groups show the same levels of inequality and hierarchy as normal social groups. The social scientist, Himelboim, analysed discussions among more than 200,000 participants in 35 newsgroups over a six-year period. He focused his analysis on political and philosophical newsgroups on Usenet, 35