A Harris poll just released estimates that about “160 million of the 225 million adults in the U.S. have looked online for information about their health, up 37% since 2005.” An amazing number but not really surprising giving the wholesale migration of public researching to the web. Now the Harris people call these folks, strangely enough, “cyberchondriacs”– which include most of us by the way. This clever in-house word-play is not to imply anything “negative” according to Harris, but it does make you wonder a bit about the subtle associations and attitudes lurking in the intellectual backwaters of those who channel our every opinion for mass consumption.
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