Email deities and broadband deaths

Playing god - and meeting god...

Security company Indicii Salus has released research that shows people care more about the sanctity of snail mail than email. It seems we are more likely to snoop at correspondence when it is on someone's monitor or in a shared inbox than when it comes through the front door. But the most interesting part of the survey was buried further down the release which accompanied the findings. Given email's place in the modern office, email administrators have in many companies taken on god-like status. The survey claims the IT department has become the most respected source of company information - or gossip. Want to know about the pay review, the possible acquisition, whether Jill in accounts really did go home with Bill in engineering last Friday? Ask Steve in IT. The moral here? Whatever you care to send electronically, be reminded of a techie we saw at a security conference a few years back. Very tall, with long curly hair and a thousand yard stare, his T-shirt simply read: "I read your email." You've been warned. Death by broadband? There is a Japanese expression for people who die from working too hard. (A silicon.com mouse mat goes to the person who can remember what it is.) Soon, perhaps, there will have to be an expression - in several languages - for someone who dies from using the internet too much. Earlier this month, a Korean man died after 96 hours at a PC bang (cybercafe) terminal. Now a 27-year-old Taiwanese surfer has overdosed online after a similar, 32 hour gaming session. It won't take long for people to make the 'broadband can kill you' connection - both countries are at the top of the world rankings for broadband penetration. But perhaps anyone jumping to such a conclusion should note the men were both in very public places. Curtailing home net use wouldn't have helped. We can already hear the comments about rationing some dial-up internet access packages...