Well done, Christian! Hope to see you at an AoIR conference soon. It did occur to me (despite "talking too much") that the disease model functions more sufficiently when the device is perceived as human or human-like. Reeves, B. and C. Nass (1996). The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge, MA, CLSI Publications, Cambridge University Press. I feel sure that Nass/Reeves has said something about this more recently. There was some research on telephone addiction but now I can't find it. Here's one on television: Sundar, L. and S. Sundar (2002). "Television addiction - is no mere metaphor." Scientific American February. refers to paper: Lang, A. (2000). "The limited capacity model of mediated message processing." Journal of Communication 50(1): 46-70. Cheers, Denise Denise N. Rall, PhD thesis submitted, School of Environ. Science, Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tuesdays: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 or Mobile 0427 245 497 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/ Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com