I started pondering this yesterday while reading the newspaper, the way technology seems to bring out the inner (and extremely immature) child.

The article was about automating customer service and it got into trial projects looking at creating an automated emergency room check-in system where you walk in and are faced with a touch-screen terminal displaying the human body. You just tap where it hurts and wait your turn....maybe there's something wrong with me, but my mind went straight into the gutter.

All I can imagine is staggering in suffering from a heart attack and when the screen pops up, instead of indicating that I have chest pain and my arm is numb, just wildly tapping to spot to indicate that my balls hurt until my heart finally gives out and I collapse in a pile on the floor.

I'm sure eventually some doc would look at me, but they'd assume it's some kind of testicle problem.

That's only one example though. Every now and then I play web Pictionary or whatever you want to call it at iSketch. While most people are there just to play the game, every now and then THIS happens:



Obviously, it's the anonymity that does it. You wouldn't dare mess around with a triage nurse face-to-face, especially not while having a heart attack, but when all you've got a is a computer screen, baser instincts seem to take over.

I mean, really, certain temptations are just too hard to ignore. Take inSpot for example.

The purpose of the site is to anonymously inform sexual partners that they have contracted a disease from sleeping with you.

While it sounds like a good idea, it's just screaming to be used as a pranking tool....

I wonder if all the pioneers of modern technology had any idea what they were creating.