Microsoft Network in the UK has taken four people, stripped them naked, handed them a credit card limit of 500 pounds ($805), turned the webcams on them, and locked them in a hotel room for a week.
The idea is, MSN says, to demonstrate how it is possible to survive for 100 hours using only the web and a credit card to buy food, drink, clothing and entertainment. The study is being conducted in a hotel in central London, with human-computer interaction expert Dr Helen Petrie, who has designed a program to assess the four participants. MSN says it will conduct the same experiment in one year, to evaluate how fast internet services progress.
The four participants are volunteers who replied to a newspaper advertisement. They include a retired firefighter, an unemployed 30-year old, a freelance Encarta editor and a 46 year old American. Visitors to the MSN web site can participate by emailing advice, chatting or watching on the four webcams that have been trained on the volunteers (who are given bath robes to spare their shame). Unsurprisingly, full interaction is only possible using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Microsoft Chat.
