Most of the Internet users in a recent survey could identify Bill Gates, knew hashtags were used on Twitter and that a megabyte dwarfed a kilobyte -- but they also weren't sure what a company's privacy policy was.
The Pew Research Internet Project polled 1,066 Internet users and found that about 56 percent thought that a company's privacy policy meant it kept user information confidential, according to the report. (In reality, that may not be the case.) Another 39 percent also didn't understand what net neutrality was.
The 17-item survey was not extensive, but did show that knowledge seemed to exist in pockets. Some questions were a bit obscure -- only 9 percent knew the first graphical Web browser was Mosaic -- but others just seemed to be a collection of common knowledge, such as the character limit on Twitter (140 according to a correct 60 percent.) It seemed like an odd game of bar "Jeopardy".
We would have liked to have seen, instead of photographs of Bill Gates (83 percent got it right) and Sheryl Sandberg (21 percent got it right), the survey asking more questions about Internet issues including privacy and net neutrality. How much do people know and really understand about their technological world? Is it more or less than we think?
