PBS Frontline: "Growing Up Online"

[Pangloss]

Next week's episode of PBS Frontline looks interesting enough to merit a heads-up here at SFN. They're going to tackle the subject of children and the Internet. The promo piece was interesting, but what really caught my attention is the fact that this is, I think, the first time I've seen major news reporting tackle this subject and NOT take the position that censorship is necessary.

 

“You have a generation faced with a society with fundamentally different properties thanks to the Internet,” says Danah Boyd, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “We can turn our backs and say, ‘This is bad,’ or, ‘We don’t want a world like this.’ It’s not going away. So instead of saying that this is terrible, instead of saying, ‘Stop MySpace; stop Facebook; stop the Internet,’ it’s a question for us of how we teach ourselves and our children to live in a society where these properties are fundamentally a way of life. This is public life today.”

 

The entire episode will be available online starting on the 22nd, or check your local listings for broadcast times.

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/

[Sisyphus]

But... but... the internet is full of pedophiles and identity thieves!

[Gilded]

I recall hearing of these "Internets".

 

It isn't that big of a deal really, just integrate some Internet-related education to primary school. "Timmy & the Man Who Asked "a/s/l?", Whoring yourself on MySpace - How to do it right, Trolling 101, How to appear cool on forums, Proper Use of Avatars - Naked chick or nuclear explosion?, Timmy Learns About Sarcasm, the Language of the Internet". Later on science subjects could have courses like "The Internet - Auditorium for crackpot theories".

 

And most importantly, I think it's critical that children learn at an early age that the Internet is NOT a big truck that you can just dump something on, it's a series of tubes.

[seven8s]

Perhaps it could be titled how to go to hell in a hand basket. Hands have finger that type, and minds that breath. Beauty and the beast? The dragon and the beast?

 

Oh what a web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

 

I imagine we will all be kept quite busy putting out the fires. It is the dawning of the age of aquarius............maybe by 2012 we will all be a little more knowledgeable, and as such we can know fire as if for the first time.

[blike]

Interesting. I'd like to see a more scholarly approach to the social and cultural changes the internet is bringing than the typical media alarmism. It's getting old.

[CDarwin]

A fight started on Myspace is filmed with a cellphone and posted on YouTube. Isn't that the perfect metaphor for our age?

[seven8s]

Blike

Interesting. I'd like to see a more scholarly approach to the social and cultural changes the internet is bringing than the typical media alarmism. It's getting old.

 

Do you mind if I ask how do you determine which scholar is correct in that there are so many that have differences of opinion on the same subject matter?

[Pangloss]

You don't. But a scholarly approach will typically shed more valuable information on a subject than the usual local news story.

[seven8s]

Pangloss

You don't. But a scholarly approach will typically shed more valuable information on a subject than the usual local news story.

 

Hmm, interesting. My question was, ‘how do you determine which scholar is correct’ and your answer is, ‘you don’t’. And so we do what, follow the sheep? Sheep have skins, correct? No thinking for oneself? And by the way, that local news story had a congressional report that went with it, and also tons of other information, ‘evidence’, ‘proofs’ as to it’s validity, but what would I know.............

 

Thank you for sharing.

[Pangloss]

Why are you ignoring the rest of my response? There is value in analysis even if the bias cannot be fully determined, because you can analyze the methods used and determine whether they were appropriate and whether the results are enlightening (or not).

 

If you're on this forum to preach that logic and reason can never be applied under any circumstances, I really think you've come to the wrong place.

[blike]

Do you mind if I ask how do you determine which scholar is correct in that there are so many that have differences of opinion on the same subject matter?

See Pangloss' responses.

[john5746]

Interesting. I'd like to see a more scholarly approach to the social and cultural changes the internet is bringing than the typical media alarmism. It's getting old.

 

Nah, just put an entry into Wikipedia and make a youtube clip, set to some rap music.