http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/APCITY/UNPAN002553.pdf

There is no general data protection or privacy law in Singapore. The government
has been aggressive in using surveillance to promote social control and limit domestic
opposition

Electronic surveillance of communications is governed by the
Telecommunications Authority of Singapore (TAS). The government has extensive
powers under the Internal Security Act and other acts to monitor anything that is
considered a threat to "national security." The U.S. State Department in 1998 stated,
"Divisions of the Government's law enforcement agencies, including the Internal
Security Department and the Corrupt Practices Investigation Board, have wide
networks for gathering information. It is believed that the authorities routinely
monitor citizens' telephone conversations and use of the Internet. While there were no
proven allegations that they did so in 1997, it is widely believed that the authorities
routinely conduct surveillance on some opposition politicians and other critics of the
Government." All of the Internet Services Providers are operated by
government-owned or government-controlled companies. Each person in Singapore
wishing to obtain an Internet account must show their national ID card to the provider
to obtain an account. ISPs reportedly provide information on users to government
officials without legal requirements on a regular basis.

An extensive Electronic Road Pricing system for monitoring road usage went
into effect in 1998. The system collects information on an automobile's travel from
smart cards plugged into transmitters in every car and in video surveillance cameras.
The service claims that the data will only be kept for 24 hours and does not maintain a
central accounting system. Video surveillance cameras are also commonly used for
monitoring roads and preventing littering in many areas. It was proposed in Tampines
in 1995 that cameras be placed in all public spaces including corridors, lifts, and open
areas such as public parks, car parks and neighborhood centers and broadcast on the
public cable television channel.

Some might say that I'm flogging a dead horse here. But as always, I hope to find new perspectives from old debates (there's a Chinese idiom for it called 温故知新 - loosely translated to gaining new knowledge from revising the old stuff. =)).

Privacy has often been sacrificed for 'safety' purposes. Here, the question we need to ask is whose safety are we talking about?

Is sacrificing my privacy for my safety acceptable?
Is sacrificing my privacy for the general public's safety acceptable?
Is sacrificing my privacy for the safety of a selected few acceptable?

What about the ERP? Is sacrificing my privacy for traffic efficiency acceptable?

I posted a bookmark on something related to this issue.

http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC090907-0000047/The-photo-thats-caused-a-stir

AP decided to publish a photo of a fatally wounded young Marine lying crumpled in the mud, his vulnerable face visible to the camera.

The United States Defence Secretary did not want the press to release it. Neither did the family of the deceased solder in the photo.

After lengthy internal discussions, AP concluded that the photo was a part of the war they needed to convey.

I don't really think there's an ethical way to report war. But I opine that AP has gone over the board with the photo. Surely the public doesn't need a photo to know the 'reality' of war, as if the photo is THE reality in the first place; it is merely a (re)presentation of the reality. It seems that AP has subscribed to the fallacy of affective corporeality (to borrow a term from Theatre Studies), that further 'performance' of the war is required to affectively engage the readers.

I don't need to see a photo to know how cruel or brutal war is! There are enough blockbusters on war around. And I have a mind should I require images.

But then again, some people don't usually use their minds, and so they made an (ass) out of (u) and (me) that the military is supposed to be gentlemanly.

What is wrong with these people?

Ethical question, when public's demand for information collides with private's demand for non-disclosure, which one should win? How do we measure the pros and cons?

Journalistic Ethics

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1002815/1/.html

International guidelines on sex education reignite debate
By Ong Dailin, TODAY | Posted: 04 September 2009 0715 hrs

SINGAPORE: A foreign controversy, over a set of proposed international guidelines on sex education, threatens to reignite the debate that raged just six months ago over Singapore's own sexuality education programme in schools.

The guidelines, scheduled to be released by UNESCO next week, are aimed at reducing HIV infections among the young, and will be distributed to education ministries and school systems around the world.

But an earlier draft issued in June was attacked by conservative and religious groups, mainly in the United States, for recommending discussions of homosexuality, describing sexual abstinence as "only one of a range of choices available to young people" - and even suggesting a discussion of masturbation with children as young as five, reported the New York Times.

When contacted by TODAY, a Ministry of Education (MOE) spokeswoman said: "We will be studying the revised guidelines to see how useful and relevant they are to the current review of Sexuality Education in our schools."

Two civil society groups expressed contrasting views.

Ms Dana Lam, president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), felt UNESCO's guidelines affirmed AWARE's own Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) programme, which was suspended by the MOE in May.

Ms Lam said the UNESCO guidelines, which took an "evidence-informed and rights-based" approach, offered "a sound, comprehensive approach to sexuality education".

The emphasis "on relationships, values, attitudes, culture, human development, sexual and reproductive health exactly matches the emphasis" in AWARE's CSE programme, she added.

The latter was suspended after parents objected to the programme's explicit content, and the MOE found it conveyed messages "which could promote homosexuality or suggest approval of pre-marital sex".

Going forward, the ministry signalled that sexuality education should "adhere to social norms and values of our mainstream society"; while Education Minister Ng Eng Hen said it should encourage heterosexual married couples to have healthy relationships and stable families.

Focus on the Family's senior vice-president, Mrs Chong Cheh Hoon, was opposed to the UNESCO guidelines.

Apart from questioning their US-centrism and bias, she found some of the content "highly inappropriate", such as teaching children aged nine to 12 about basic contraception.

"This is like telling our kids not to smoke and yet providing them with cigarette filters," she said.

In the material recommended for ages 12 to 15, the guidelines advise the youth to practise safe and consensual sex "if sexually active". But, Mrs Chong countered, this was inconsistent messaging - since countries like Singapore have statutory rape laws covering those up to age 14.

UNESCO experts have been working on the guidelines for two years, reportedly drawing on more than 80 studies of sex education. But conservative flak has already caused one of the project's key participating agencies, the United Nations Population Fund, to pull back, said NYT.

UNESCO has defended its guidelines as "evidence-informed and rights-based". Its guidelines also argue that sex education helps to delay the onset of sexual activity, reduce the number of sexual partners and unprotected sex.

"In the absence of a vaccine for AIDS, education is the only vaccine we have," said Mr Mark Richmond, UNESCO's global coordinator for HIV and AIDS.

He added that just 40 per cent of youth aged 15 to 24 "have accurate knowledge" of how the disease is transmitted.

------------------------------------

My comment/ question: What happens when both partners are below the age of consent? Who's raping who in that case? I wonder how the severity is like in such cases compared to outright rape under the law. If it is indeed more severe than outright rape, why then shouldn't we provide sex education that really educates rather than preaches?

Again, here we see the nonsensical/ irrational argument oft-used by the conservatives bigots that kids and their whatever innocence or pureness should be 'protected'. If anything, knowledge is the best form of protection against anything and everything! Knowing the map protects you from getting lost. Knowing math protects you from being cheated by unscrupulous mercenaries.

Besides, sex education is after all education. That there is a "sex" adjective in front does not mean that it is sexual. It is the dirty minds of these bigots that make sex education sounds bad. And that is assuming that sex is inherently bad in the first place.

God these people.

"These women will have forever have to live with the social stigma of being a "porn star" and whatever negativity that is associated with that concept. "

The patriarchal ideology is the underlying cause of such a stigma. The idea that women should somehow by virtue of some higher being, be pure and innocent, untainted by sex. That women should be devoid of sexual agency.

The stigma, in this case, will not be eliminated by eliminating the pornography industry. It can only be eliminated by educating people against patriarchy.

Indeed, we can start questioning the women who have benefited from the industry. Without which, they might suffer worse due to poverty or other underlying circumstances. At least we can be certain that the industry protects them to a certain extent by having them go for STDs tests regularly. =)

Which brings me to my question, which is better - a porn star or a sex worker?


Jianwei Tan wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3dDXppgUpI
> http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=4320649&page=1
>
> ABC News hosts a face-off debate about the pornography industry at Yale. Arguing against pornography were Craig Gross who runs an online community for people addicted to pornography and Donny Pauling who was an ex-producer of pornography. The 2 people arguing for pornography were Monique Alexandar who is an adult actress with the world's largest adult-film producer, and Ron Jeremy, an adult actor who has appeared in more than 1,900 pornographic movies.
>
> The entire length of video is quite long but both sides brought up many issues about pornography that are less debated about but just as important.
>
> One particular point that I want to bring up is how little we think about protecting the women (not being sexist here, it's just that they mostly brought up female examples) who end up in the adult industry. When people think about exploitation of a group of people in pornography, the most salient issue is usually child pornography. However, I think it's important to think about the women who got into the adult industry due to naivety or misjudgments. Everybody makes mistakes. Should these women have no opportunity to start over? Due to P2P file sharing networks, these pornographic titles will continue circulating until who knows when. These women will have forever have to live with the social stigma of being a "porn star" and whatever negativity that is associated with that concept.
>
> Should we do something to stop the pornography industry? What if we can destroy the industry? Could the next possible solution be to stop descriminating against them and recognise "pornographic actress" as just another occupation?

"Also, I do not believe that people are born knowing how to engage in sexual activity. "

From a Socratic perspective, knowledge is inherent in us. You just need to ask the right question at the right moment. =) (Self-)questioning is the essence of knowledge on sex. Not pornography. =)

"I do not think that censorship exacerbates stereotypes. I believe stereotypes exacerbates stereotypes. Without first knowing what are the stereotypes, how do we know that these are stereotypes?"

But how do we know what the stereotypes are in the first place? Though censored media perhaps? So yes, censorship can be argued to exacerbate stereotypes. =) It's just how much.

Hi Valerie,

I think there's a need to make a distinction between child pornography and child watching pornography, which seems to be conflated in our arguments.

When we censor child pornography, I assume we are censoring it on the basis of the exploitation of children in the filming, in that there is no informed consent on their part. But then again, who determines that they are incapable of giving informed consent? Do we some how become capable of becoming informed the moment we past 12 midnight of our 21st birthday?

To complicate the issue further, I will like to paint the following scenarios:

Is it there a difference between an adult-child pornography, and a child-child pornography? While the latter may sound ludicrous, it is the very case we are seeing (literally) now with the amount of home-made pornography featuring children (teens included) below the legal age of adulthood? Who films them and distributes them becomes of interest here. We are always thinking about the pornographic industry. But we have ignored the individual producer in this prosumer era. What happens when a child share his/ her own pornography?

Moving on, when we censor a child watching pornography, I'm assuming that we are censoring it to protect the child's innocence and pureness. But as mentioned in class, and as I have shown, the idea of childhood is a relatively new development. So is it then ethical for us to restrict the child's access to pornography? On what rational basis can we do that?

Again, it does not mean that I am for promotion of child pornography or child watching pornography. I'm simply raising the questions so that we can hopefully rationally arrive at a rational solution. (That is assuming that rationality is the way forward though)

Valerie Oon wrote:
> As much as the child/adult split may be socially constructed, I think the problem most of us have with child porn is that it just seems a wrong way for children to be initiated into 'adulthood' this way. Of course, one may argue that the perverseness of pornography itself is a construct, like everything else, then it's all a matter of culture.
>
>
> Weiye Loh wrote:
> > "I do not agree that the child / adult split is artificial. While taking into account the environment where a child is nurtured, there are also clearly biological and psychological differences."
> >
> > Hi Jaime,
> >
> > Let me point you to the case of Brooke Greenberg, who is the size of an infant, with the mental capacity of a toddler.
> >
> > She turned 16 in January.
> >
> > http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Health/Story?id=7880954&page=1
> >
> > Clearly, the child/adult split is artifical and socially constructed, which explains why we need another set of classification for people who are clearly of 'legal' age but lacking the legal mentality.
> >
> > "Has this polarization of child and adult benefited or disadvantaged children? Are the rights of children suppressed because of their supposed inability to deal with "adult" issues? On the other hand, if we don't construct these boundaries, are we encouraging the exploitation of the young and vulnerable? "
> >
> > Such a separation has clearly benefited AND disadvantaged "children", by which I'm referring to those who are deemed to be of certain 'mental age', whatever that means, as well. It separates you from them, discriminating them as perhaps less of a person simply because they have different 'IQ', which in itself is a socially constructed measure.
> >
> > Children are sometimes more capable than so called adults. If inquisitiveness is the necessary ingredient of a researcher, then children make better researchers than many of us here! =)
> >
> > jaime yeo wrote:
> > > Again this raises the question of to what extent children should be protected, what rights a child has and to what extent he can exercise those rights. I do not agree that the child / adult split is artificial. While taking into account the environment where a child is nurtured, there are also clearly biological and psychological differences. Has this polarization of child and adult benefited or disadvantaged children? Are the rights of children suppressed because of their supposed inability to deal with "adult" issues? On the other hand, if we don't construct these boundaries, are we encouraging the exploitation of the young and vulnerable?

All Representamen is inherently an abstraction.

Remember "Ceci n'est pas une pipe"?

Even the representation by a porn actor is nothing but an abstraction. He is not really him per se. He represents a part of him i.e. the actor part of the human being. And that representation is further abstracted into pictures, arranged in order and flipped thru at 24 frames per seconds to simulate actions.

One could argue that the level of abstraction is different as per Saussure's argument. But how does the level affects the receivers in this case i.e. pornography? Is the intensity of sexual gratifications less or more? Perhaps then, what matters is not really the representation but what the receiver interprets. After all, the interpretations says more about the receiver than about the representation.

Ang Yao Zong wrote:
> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6227619
>
> This article on the MSNBC wesbite discusses the increasing popularity of online cartoons and animations with pornographic themes. These include from "hentai" (japanese anime porn), western cartoon characters and computer generated "porn characters".
>
> Ethical question:
>
> Can cartoon characters (involved in a pornographic theme) be deemed as being representative of humans involved in similar sexual/pornographic acts? Cartoon characters afterall, are often a product of our imagination and we can often relate (in reality) to these characters in terms of the words they say or the things they do.
>
> On the flip side, what if stick figures or humanoids were used in such pornographic portrayal instead? Could we then argue against the portrayal of such characters or would they be deemed as not representative of a human being?
>
>
> Ethical problem:
>
> Should viewing online pornography be deemed as a negative act if an individual only intends to view such photos/pictures/videos for the sake of curiousity? How do we know if viewing pornography actually lead to action and imitation (which is one of the factors being put forward to argue against pornography)?

I must correct that never in my arguments did I mentioned that the interpreter is the problem. I was merely answering YZ's question if cartoon characters can be deemed as representative of human beings. And as I've shown, all representations are abstractions. So the separation between what constitutes a representative representation and a non representative representation is false. This is regardless of the creator's intent. =)

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t21933.html

"Because 95 percent of the libertarianism one encounters at cocktail parties, on editorial pages, and on Capitol Hill is a kind of commonplace "street" libertarianism, I decline to allow libertarians the sophistical trick of using a vulgar libertarianism to agitate for what they want by defending a refined version of their doctrine when challenged philosophically. We've seen Marxists pull that before...

If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism...

The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it... A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice... But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments.

Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it... this violates common sense by denying that anything is good by nature, independently of whether we choose it... Taken to its logical conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means there are no inherently good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose to spend his life playing tiddlywinks has lived as worthy a life as a Washington or a Churchill...

If all we want is limited freedom, then mere liberalism will do, or even better, a Burkean conservatism that reveres traditional liberties...

Empirically, most people don't actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don't elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people don't choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians...

Libertarian naïveté extends to politics. They often confuse the absence of government impingement upon freedom with freedom as such. But without a sufficiently strong state, individual freedom falls prey to other more powerful individuals. A weak state and a freedom-respecting state are not the same thing, as shown by many a chaotic Third-World tyranny."


A better article in the thread:

"For a great many people, Ayn Rand is a glowing light in a dark abyss, an intellectual beacon that draws them into a circle of rational illumination.

She has a certain fascination for me, too, but the gravitation is different. It is the appalling spell cast by a train wreck: the grotesque allure of crumpled metal, pools of fuel and oil, shattered ties, wrenched rails -- the shining products of the human mind, smashed by some great error...

Read Atlas Shrugged, and you see humanity with an odd double vision.

There are "the men of the mind" -- the innovative, the productive, the strivers, those rigorous with themselves and all others: the Francisco d'Anconias, the Hank Reardens, the John Galts.

And there are their opposite numbers -- the "looters," the "mystics," the spiritual and literal thugs, the moist weaklings, the death-worshipers...

Here is half of the problem with Rand's view of human nature: Are most of us really the dull-witted drones or outright leeches who inhabit so much of Atlas Shrugged?...

Rand had a record of thoroughgoing disdain for those who didn't measure up to her intellectual standards.

"When anyone compliments me," she says in Barbara Branden's biography, "my first question is: What's my estimate of the source of the compliments? Is it a mind I respect? When it's a mind that understands what I've done, then it's an enormous pleasure. Anything less than that -- no. I don't really want anything but the response of top minds."

In the wake of reviewers' eviscerating response to Atlas Shrugged, Rand felt "like an adult sentenced to live in a world of children"...

Atlas Shrugged is a hymn to the human spirit... Hymns, of course, are sung to gods, and gods need to be … well, close to perfect if not actually there...

"Make every allowance for errors of knowledge; do not forgive or accept any breach of morality."

Forgive, in fact, is one of Rand's F-words. "It is against the sin of forgiveness that I wanted to warn you," Francisco d'Anconia tells Rearden. In the world of Atlas Shrugged, justice is still a virtue, but mercy is a vice -- it lets the rotters off...

"My personal life," Rand wrote in an afterword to Atlas Shrugged, "is a postscript to my novels; it consists of the sentence: 'And I mean it.' "

It seems that she did. Disagree with her on even the smallest matters, and you might find yourself cut off at the knees...

It has often been said that one should not judge a philosophy by its adherents' behavior. But if Ayn Rand was her own best argument for the powers of reason, the perfectablity of man, the virtues of selfishness and the disposability of forgiveness -- as she almost certainly would have said herself -- where does that leave her case?"


Very interesting to follow the comments and read the two posts highlighted above (by http://gssq.blogspot.com/2009/08/libertarianism-is-marxism-of-right.html).. =)

What do we want? We want freedom when it (freedom) is for us... and we want restriction when it (freedom) is against us.... self-reflexivity is crucial.

It's not really an exaggeration as it has already happened. =)

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story/deep-purple-fined-for-performing-their-own-songs-in-russia_1108677

Rockers DEEP PURPLE have been fined for playing their own songs in Russia.
A local court has handed down the fine after Ian Gillan, Ian Paice and Roger Glover failed to clear rights to their tunes in Russia before a concert in Rostov-on-Don last year (Oct08).
According to the court's ruling, the musicians should have obtained a license from the Russian Authors' Society, known as NGO, before the public performance.
NGO represents the rights of foreign performers in Russia.
For every 'unlicensed' song, the court imposed a penalty of 30,000 roubles ($1,000/GBP666) on the organisers of the concert, according to RussiaToday.com.

Not knowing the exact history of the IP laws, I think it is important to look at the original purpose of it being enacted and re-evaluate its current interpretations (hermeneutic?) with a critical stand of course to evaluate the worth of the original purpose in today's context.

Unfortunately, it is never easy to put into practice. hahaha.

Jude John wrote:
> http://www.newmediarights.org/external_feeds/eff_breaking_news/ascap_makes_outlandish_copyright_claims_cell_phone_ringtones
>
> 1. "as part of a ploy to squeeze more money out of the mobile phone companies, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) has told a federal court that each time a phone rings in a public place, the phone user has violated copyright law."
>
> 2. "Worse, these wrongheaded legal claims cast a shadow over innovators who are building gadgets that help consumers get the most from their copyright privileges.
> "Because it is legal for consumers to play music in public, it's also legal for my mobile phone carrier to sell me a ringtone and a phone to do it," said von Lohmann. "Otherwise it would be illegal to sell all kinds of technologies that help us enjoy our fair use, first sale, and other copyright privileges."
>
> In light of this, is it ethical for copyright owners to want to be able to extend control over all forms of expression of their expressions?
> Copyright promoted a behaviour such that an individual's rights over his/her intellectual property take precendence over the rights of others to use them, but where does one find the balance between these rights? At this rate even the IP owners themselves will want themselves to pay for using their own IP! (An exaggeration, but I hope you get my point)
>
> Users too, will will aggrieved at his latest course of action because ultimately they will have to in some way contribute to this added cost. This then adds to the whole piracy issue, as they feel that they have to fight (unethical) fire with (unethical) fire.

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2009_02_13/caredit.a0900021

But this column isn't about the carpet cleaner who won the Nobel Prize. It's about the courtesy van driver who didn't. The 2008 Nobel Prize in chemistry honors Osamu Shimomura, professor emeritus at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and Boston University Medical School; Martin Chalfie, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of biological sciences and department chair at Columbia University, and Roger Tsien, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego, for "the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP," according to a Nobel statement. Used as an intracellular "tagging tool," GFP is a "guiding star for biochemistry" that lets scientists watch processes involved in cancer, neural development, and much more.

But a fourth man, Douglas Prasher, played what Tsien has called "a very important role" in the GFP story, making it possible for Chalfie and Tsien to do their work. "They could've easily given the prize to Douglas and the other two and left me out," Chalfie has been quoted as saying in numerous media reports. But they didn't give it to Prasher, and for anyone interested in understanding the scientific labor market, the tale of Prasher, the protein, and the prize serves, rather like a glowing body within a cell, as a marker revealing realities often obscured by misconception and myth.

Since everything is built upon past knowledge, past works, etc., what exactly is original? Is it then ethical to accord someone the title/ status/ ownership of certain intellectual property?

http://www.hilwerda.com/turnitin.htm
The biggest complaints against the use of Turn It In! software are:

1) it is a violation of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA);
2) it is a violation of intellectual copyright protection;
3) it is a violation of confidentiality between student and teacher (what happens when someone breaches the Turn It In! database and exposes the writings of millions of students to the public? Writings that were supposed to be held confidential between students and their instructors? See the right-hand side bar for a brief list of major security breaches).


Now that I'm in my last semester, it's nice to revisit something that was 'heavily' debated in my NM1101E class during my very first semester.

Is turnitin unethical? One of the arguments raised by an exchange student from Canada was that it assumes that all students are unethical and plagiarizes. And such an assumption is inherently unethical since there's no basis of of proof.

It goes back to the question raised during the virus presentation that police are in jobs because of the thieves. If there's no thieves there wouldn't be a need for police. But is it ethical to assume that people are likely to be thieves and hence warrant the need for police? Chicken and egg.

http://tvnz.co.nz/content/176360

Male. Obsessed with computers. Lacking a girlfriend. Aged 14 to 34. Capable of sowing chaos worldwide.
That's the profile of the average computer-virus writer, an anti-virus expert said.

It is easy to blame the individuals - people who commit suicide are selfish and irresponsible with their lives, people who murder are plain evil, people who writes virus are plain bored and need to get a life, people with depression are just mental. But underlying such superficial causes, there could be severe social/ structural issues that perpetuates the society.

Durkheim linked suicide to social ills. And perhaps virus creation is no different. Instead of chastising these individuals, wouldn't it be more helpful to answer these potential calls for help? Is it ethical for us to blame the virus creators when we are the ones who are not answering their possibly earlier calls for help? Why causes these individuals to become obsessed with computers? Rejection by the society? Whose faults is it then? The individuals? Or the society?