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The Buzz

Study disputes notion that Web isolates users

By wire services
Published January 30, 2006

Alone on the Internet? Hardly.

The cyberworld expands people's social networks and even encourages people to talk by phone or meet others in person, a new study finds.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project also finds that U.S. Internet users are more apt to get help on health care, financial and other decisions because they have a larger set of people to whom to turn.

Further rebuking early studies suggesting that the Internet promotes isolation, Pew found that it "was actually helping people maintain their communities," said Barry Wellman, a University of Toronto sociology professor and co-author of the Pew report.

The study found that e-mail is supplementing, not replacing, other means of contact. For example, people who e-mail most of their closest friends and relatives at least once a week are about 25 percent more likely to have weekly landline phone contact as well. The increase is even greater for cell phones.

America Online, the largest U.S. Internet access provider, has won a $5.6-million award against a Minnesota man who sent billions of spam e-mails over the service in 2003 and whose case helped spawn anti-spamming legislation.

Christopher William Smith, 25, was ordered to pay $5.3-million, or $25,000 for every day he sent out spam e-mails, plus $287,059 for America Online's legal fees, U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton in Alexandria, Va., ruled.

Smith, who dropped out of high school in 1998 and lived in a $1.1-million house until he was arrested, was at the center of the case that pushed Congress into passing the 2003 Can-Spam law, designed to cut down on unwanted e-mails that clog Internet in-boxes and slow the services.

The Star Trek series, now relegated to video rentals and television reruns, plans to beam up some new video games this year.

In an exclusive licensing deal announced with CBS Corp.'s CBS Communications Group, Bethesda Softworks LLC will publish Trek games for consoles, handheld systems and personal computers. Terms weren't disclosed.

Rockville, Md.-based Bethesda's first title will be Star Trek: Legacy, where gamers can orchestrate space battles as a Starfleet admiral. A second game for handheld systems will let players control either Federation or Klingon forces.

Both are scheduled for release in September to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the franchise that introduced pointy-eared Vulcans and photon torpedoes.

For tech news throughout the week, join Times personal technology editor Dave Gussow at the Tech Times blog (www.sptimes.com/blogs/tech) We invite you to join the discussion by posting your comments and questions. Also, for more on the video game scene, check out Josh Korr's video game blog (www.sptimes.com/blogs/videogames)

[Last modified January 27, 2006, 10:48:05]