Honesty on the Net

An article in the New York Times [requires free subscription] discusses a Cornell professor’s small study of student behaviour, and found that they will lie more often off-line than online. At first this seems counter-intuitive, but:

On the Internet, though, your words often come back to haunt you. The digital age is tough on its liars, as a seemingly endless parade of executives are learning to their chagrin. Today’s titans of industry are laid low not by ruthless competitors but by prosecutors gleefully waving transcripts of old e-mail, filled with suggestions of subterfuge.

The Internet may be making us all more honest, because our words can live forever, so we’re more careful online. We also have a tendency to spill our guts a lot more – witness blogs. This essay was referred by NewsScan Daily, whose credo is "Be informative, have fun, and get to the point!"