Oh dear. No exit strategy from blogging for me based on a claim of internet addiction apparently.

"Just like all addictions, it takes you in a direction that you don't want to go. It's slow moving at first and all of a sudden it takes over," said Dr. Diane Wieland, author of the study published in the latest addition of Perspectives in Psychiatric Care. "It's probably very subtle, but people who are antisocial would be most vulnerable to this form of addiction." The study argues that Internet addiction is as an overarching term applied to five different compulsive online behaviours: excessive use of adult websites, or cybersexual addiction; cyber-relationship addiction, where there is an over-involvement with online relationships; net compulsion, such as gambling, shopping or stock trading; information overload from Web surfing and database searching; and addiction to interactive computer games.

Hmmm...the Flea's pictures are as close as I get to the rude bits, I really am sort of chilly to anyone I meet online, I might buy a couple of books from Amazon at Chirstmas, think the net is full of lies and am the guy shot within five seconds in any first person shooter I play.

It's a little strange to read about an internet addiction study, the weekly stuff of TV's 60 Minutes and The Fifth Estate circa 1995. I recall one such piece about a couple who actually emailed each other even though they ran a home business and were only a couple of rooms apart. That is now called the workplace. And for all my carping about the downside of the super highway of information, that fixation on internet workplace communication - mainly via email - remains the one killer app all pretenders bow down before. Documents still get faxed, airlines fly and meetings (meatings?) still get help. But, like the addiction to coffee as a workplace intensifier, any addiction to employment-based cyber-relationship via email - which can be viewed I think as an over-involvement with online relationships - is probabaly as much a part of the economic boom of the last 15 years as anything.