[8908] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: What Will It Take To Educate TV About the Net?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hughes)
Sat Dec 11 14:36:39 1993
From: dave@oldcolo.com (Dave Hughes)
To: bcox@gmu.edu (Brad Cox @ GMU/PSOL)
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1993 12:30:58 -0700 (MST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com (compriv)
In-Reply-To: <9312111434.AA12652@mason1.gmu.edu> from "Brad Cox @ GMU/PSOL" at Dec 11, 93 09:38:20 am
Brad Cox suggests:
>Small (or large) entrepreneurs, analogous to publishers or newsletter
>writers, might establish businesses to supply carefullyl filtered
>information targeted to special audiences such as kids. They do this for
>the same reasons people do anything; some do it for charity, most do it for
>a fee.
I have no problem with that. The flip side of the coin of blocking out,
is letting in. But the question is - who makes the decision? Your
suggestion focuses on the content. Mine on the access process.
My core point is that, with *personal* computers and communication devices
constituting the real social revolution of the Information Age, and with
the inherent design TCP/IP capabilities of anyone on the net to reach every
other person, system, file, and program on every other system on the net,
that we ought to - because now we can - concentrate on putting ultimate
*technical* power into the hands of the user-individual to decide, in
advance, what they DON'T want to arrive on their screen, along with what
they DO. And not waste our effort trying to tell 'producers' of information
what they should or should not put on the net, or to expect service
'intermediaries' to do that for either end.
And since minor children are assumed to be the responsibility of some
adults - parents, guardians, teachers - then that 'power' should be placed
into the hands of that responsible person to configure systems they give to
their kids, let them use, or schools put them in front of. To program
according to *their* values and choices they must make for their children.
I have given my two granddaughters, 8 and 11, 1,500 miles away in Seattle,
access to the Internet. So they can communicate in written form with their
grandmother here. (and not so incidentaly learn to read and write better in
the process). Now the service I hooked them to is full Internet. With raw
Unix prompt at login. Where they have to manually type 'pine' to get
started.
Their parents, while more than most, use computers and telecom, simply
don't have the technical skills to create the programs to carry out their
family-value wishes. I do, but it won't be easy, even telnetting in,
starting with .profile, to limit/enable their selective access. At this
moment, all the pornographic GIFs in the world are accessible to them.
And no way are their parents going to be looking over their shoulder while
they are online. They shouldn't have to. And calls for online services to
limit what they send, is fruitless. End users are going to be the producers
of pornography as much as an 'industry.' And it is not reasonable to assume
that it is the net-providers responsibility to decide what should or should
not be accessed. (although the first net access entrepeneurs who build in
the control 'tools' to permit parents/teachers to menu select - and change
- access and denial to whole fields of 'information' and even
'communications' is going to make a bundle. And the first Internet access
school that develops a general-solution server program suite that does the
same thing at the server, or LAN connected machine (one for 3d graders,
quite a different one for 12th graders) is going to be inundated with
requests.
The technical problem the 'broadcast' age posed was that end users could
not control what comes into the tv or radio set, except by channel
selection, off/on switch, and 'rules.' From a practical standpoint, parents
could not control everything their children saw or not 24 hours a day from
the time the children could manipulate the tv switches. And even when they
diligently used that off/on, and channel selection, and 'viewing hours'
rules, there was no way IN ADVANCE to be sure what was instantaneously
coming to the screen/radio in broadcast mode.
It is not technologically that hard to also have the front-end processor
examine incoming data, and, before passing it to the CRT, printer, disk,
exercise whatever control over incoming data that the user decides.
According to successively more sophisticated criteria - including not
passing profanity that the user finds objectionable. Radio stations have
long had 15 or so second delays between callers and broadcast. But they are
intermediaries. Its all a matter of technological implementation of a
radically different 'solution' to the problem - a shift from controlling
the broadcaster to controlling the receptor. Now possible.
Print publications posed some of the same problems, but technically have
been more 'controllable' - even in magazine stores and 7-11s by placement
of the magazines with or without full access by minors, and 'cover up'
covers for the passersby. MOST efforts being aimed at controlling the
'producer/broadcasters' while reminding parents its their 'job' to control
what their kids are reading/seeing/hearing.
But its been a losing proposition except for the most diligent parents, and
the most responsible media. The common reality is that there is NO control.
Well, in the cheap chip age, it is possible to help out the hard pressed
parent, worried teacher, without infringing on the producer's 'freedom of
speech.' Simply view the personally, school, instituionally owned net
access device as an extension of the 'receiver' of information, and build
into it emulations of the same mental defense mechanisms people use every
day to defend themselves and their children against the unwanted assault on
their senses.
Now, if you think about it, I am not assuming, in the least, *what*
B
'values' those adults will chose as a basis for telling the Internet 'front
end' what to pass, what to block. As a matter of fact there are more than a
few net users who are convinced that children should be freely exposed to
sex as a subject from the earliest age to prevent their hangups later in
what they view as a Puritan-society life. I don't agree with them at all,
but that is not the point. The point is 'responsibility' in this nation is
presumed to rest first with the Individual, and, for children, the
Parent(s), shared for some years with the School. And Freedom of Expression
is assumed to be vested in all, and with the producers of information.
All I am saying is, lets match Power with Responsibility.
