3 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
3 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

BBC: Science experiment ~ What internet animal are you?

by Sparhawke
1 replies
https://www.bbc.co.uk/labuk/experiments/webbehaviour

Try this when you can, it is currently down due to the huge traffic worldwide but will be back online in a couple of days probably...

Okay, it is back online...reason why it was down is because it came on just after prime time in England, so got flooded with about 10 million requests at the same time lol
#animal #bbc #experiment #internet #science
  • Profile picture of the author Sparhawke
    I am a web Leopard



    Fast-moving - Web Leopards like you are adept at getting information from the internet very quickly. Your speed is a trait you share with real-world leopards, which are among the fastest land animals.

    Solitary - Leopards live alone, fending for themselves in isolated home ranges. Similarly, the Web Leopard likes to go it alone when looking for information, rather than rely on social networks, or other sites where the users create the content.

    Specialised - Web Leopards are best suited to performing one task at a time rather than multitasking. The real-world leopard is similarly specialised, being perfectly adapted to silently tracking its prey before pouncing.
    How we worked out your web animal

    Our web animals are just for fun, but the test is based on solid and rigorous science, so your results should tell you something interesting about your web behaviour.

    Three aspects of your web behaviour were used to work out your web animal.

    Adaptable or specialised?

    We aren't always as good at multitasking as we think we are

    The internet allows us to do lots of things at the same time. You might be listening to music and updating your blog while receiving news alerts and chatting online with friends. Then an email arrives. Can you switch seamlessly between different tasks? Or are you actually less efficient?

    Indeed, a study from Stanford University in California suggests that people who spend their time multitasking might actually be less good at juggling tasks than non-multitaskers.

    If you are an ‘adaptable’ web animal, then you scored highly on our tests that measured your ability to multitask. If your web animal is ‘specialised’, then you are probably better suited to taking on one task at a time.

    Fast-moving or slow-moving?

    Slow and steady sometimes wins the race

    The internet helps people find information fast. Practice makes perfect, and its possible to learn techniques for getting to the information you need quickly. But speed isn’t the same as accuracy. The first answer you find isn’t necessarily the right answer.

    We measured the time it took you to complete a series of search tasks. If you are a fast-moving web animal, you took less time than average. This maybe because you know exactly what you’re doing, but could also mean you missed important information. If you are a slow-moving web animal, this could be because you're less confident, that you focused on getting the right answer rather than the first one.

    Social or solitary?

    An online social life could influence the way you trust people

    The internet has radically multiplied the ways in which we can meet new friends and stay in contact with existing ones. (Internet guru Clay Shirky once said that before the internet came along, the most recent technology that affected the way people sat down and talked to each other was the table.) So how social are you online?

    If your web animal is social, you probably told us you spend quite a lot of time on social networking sites and that you tend to trust sites whose content is created by its users. If your web animal is solitary, you probably don’t socialise as much online and are inclined to trust sites whose content is produced in a more traditional, ‘authoritative’ way.

    Social behaviour online is a fascinating area of study for our scientists. They would like to understand the relationship between time spent online and the type of information sources users choose to trust.
    Signature
    “Thinking is easy, Acting is difficult
    And to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world ~ Goethe”
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[1777277].message }}

Trending Topics