Have people become so conditioned — mainly by watching television — that they believe whatever appears on their PC monitors?
Yes, but it’s not television. People believe what they see on the Net not because of television but because of the trappings of reality. So when you got to BT.com, you see the BT logo, the BT font, the PR material, and you think, “Yeah, it’s BT” — like when you go to your bank, you see the logo and the tellers. On the Web, it could be a fake BT.com site and you don’t notice, because it’s trivially easy to copy. So people do believe what they see on the Internet — not because of television, but because the Internet has the trappings of the real world. All of those social cues you get to know to trust something — it looks professional, nothing’s misspelled — you see those things and you believe it’s real. Do you think people will ever become more suspicious of the Internet? Younger people will pick it up. But certainly you can always fool people unless there is some external validation of [Web sites]. Unless you can do that, there’s no guarantee that [users] are not going to be fooled. W
