Psychology Of The Internet Essays - Social Psychology, Collaboration

Psychology Of The Internet The Psychology of the Internet A Report on the Book by Patricia Wallace Summary of the Book Today, the internet is a growing community. Millions of people from all over the world go online everyday to check email, research, shop, or even just interact with someone halfway around the world. As this community grows, so does the number of interactions between people. The Psychology of the Internet examines the psychology of new behavior produced by this novel method of human communication. It also delves into the business sector of the internet and how certain companies are using this medium to increase productivity within their companies and corporations. Analysis of the Book The book provides several examples of how the internet can affect the quality of an organizations production. When used in the appropriate manner, the internet can facilitate interaction between a group 24 hours a day and is only limited by the availability of a telephone line. The idea that a person must be in work and at his desk for production is becoming more obsolete as companies realize the potential of the internet. One impressive way the internet can help companies is the workgroups that can be formed internationally. A workgroup is a group of employees striving to achieve the same objective. In the traditional sense, these groups are formed in a room with notepads for each person to help them brainstorm and meetings at regular intervals until the project is complete. The internet revolution is changing all of that. The workgroups are no longer governed by the geographical positioning of its members. I found this particularly interesting because the idea of having a supervisor in Manila, a Research and Development team in Cebu, and a sales group in the United States is becoming more of a feasible possibility than ever before. The internet can also help employees overcome inhibitions that they may not be able to in person. This is due, in part, to the amount of social cues that are lost over a computer. In a chat room, for example, the two employees might know nothing about each other, other than the information they provide about themselves. Therefore, any type of social stereotypes (i.e. sexism, racism, bigotry) is less prevalent than if perceived in the real world. If the employees have never met, social irritations may not be as readily triggered than if in person. For example, if I am irritated by a person who stutters when he speaks, the chances that he will do so over the internet are relatively low. This allows me to concentrate solely on the task at hand and not be distracted by insignificant things. The book speaks of how the internet groups, in the absence of social cues and orders, had to find a group identity online. In other words, the lack of social cues also has its drawbacks. Even if the members of the workgroups concede personal information about themselves, such as their race or ethnicity, the other members might have no physical basis for the connection. So if I wanted to bond with a co-worker who was a Filipino in California, I would more likely do it in person than online. This is due to the lack of human contact and the perception that I am merely interacting with my computer and not a real person. With this in mind, workgroups must find new bases for forming group coherence. The book speaks of the studying of several different multinational workgroups. All were given the same objectives to be completed in a given amount of time. However, only a few of the groups completed the task while only one group did it in the allotted amount of time. The study showed that the groups that failed lacked consistent interaction. After the initial meeting, the members of the group did not log on regularly to converse with the group. Emails were exchanged intermittently among these groups as well. The book states that the main reason these groups failed was that the interaction, already reduced by the lack of human interaction on the computer, was limited to almost nothing. On the other hand, the group that fared the best was noted as having the most email interaction and regular group

Paper Example

Paper Example Paper – Case Study Example Teacher Should Google, Yahoo, Bing or any similar search company be required by the U.S. government to block any companies who illegally sell patentable products or copyright material? Ideally they should be blocked. But how can they enforce it? Raid every company that is alleged to sell illegal patentable products or copyright material? It just cannot be done or even if the government will try, they will just fail. Because as long as there is a demand for counterfeit products and/or products that has illegal patent or copyright, there will always be companies who will sell them. Even assuming for the sake of argument that United States government will be successful in blocking them, these companies will just move their operation somewhere else and still be able to sell because the reach of the internet is global. What is to be done? Blocking companies is not enough and not effective. What should be done is to discourage demand. If there is no demand for those illegal products, there will be no companies selling them. It has to be noted that business is always stimulated by demand. Currently there are already efforts along these lines. Of course we see government raids on illegal companies but there are also information drives that discourage consumers to use them. There are a number of reasons cited that could range from use of child labor, inimical to industry, use to finance other illegal activities etch. These efforts may not have totally stopped companies selling illegal patentable products or copyright material but they are effective in reducing the demand. If these efforts will become pervasive and consistent, demand will eventually stop and these companies will cease to exist. This is better than blocking companies who sell illegal copyrighted materials.