Class distinctions online

Does anyone really believe this?

Facebook users tend to be more affluent, with its users skewing towards households earning over $60,000 per year, while MySpace users skew toward lower income levels, with 12% more of its users earning under $60,000 per year. Using the psychographic system Mosaic to track U.S. Internet users, it’s clear that there’s a class distinction between users of the two social networks. Facebook’s most predominant group of visitors in Mosaic is “affluent suburbia,” a group that Mosaic describes as “the wealthiest households in the U.S., living in exclusive suburban neighborhoods enjoying the best that life has to offer.” The predominant group for MySpace, on the other hand, is “struggling societies,” or households that are primarily single parent, single income, raising families on lower incomes and tight budgets. Read more…

Let’s chip our kids!

This article just made me feel a little bit irritated, maybe a classic British understatement. I try not to voice my opinions too loudly but here I can’t resist saying something.

They’ve started chipping kids the same way they chip criminals in the UK! Although there are only 10 chipped at the writing of this article in a pilot -I guess those are the kids who regularly truant- they are planning to place the RFID chips in all school uniforms in the future.

Darnbro state that their product can “trace a pupil’s every step during the school day” and that the system can be set up to limit access to doors for certain people at certain times, including shutting the main doors of a school to pupils during classtime. And the headteacher says that the pilot was “not intrusive to the pupil in the slightest.” Sure pull the other one it has bells on!

I agree with what David Clouter, founder of anti-fingerprinting group “Leave them kids alone”, said: “To put this in a school badge is complete and utter surveillance of the children. Tagging is what we do to criminals we let out of prison early.”

Apparently the parents think this is a good idea…. wake up! Maybe it’s because one added benefit of chipping the kids uniform is that it is easy to identify them if they become lost. I wonder why so many people cannot see any further ahead than the end of their noses? If chipping the kids today becomes socially acceptable, what will come tomorrow?