I don’t usually like putting photos of myself online, but this is a special occasion. My sister graduated today so i took the opportunity to Frock Up in academic regalia to commemorate the event. Now there are two doctors in the house (well, to be honest, we live around the same neighbourhood, so two doctors in the hood, er bonnet!)
Dr Silly and Dr Surprised
Just to be clear, I am not Dr Surprised in this photo!
Tags: funny
Or will this be blocked because it has the word analogy in it?
I was reading the links that came through the nocleanfeed twitter search, and I came across an interesting quote from Our Dear Friend, Clive Hamilton in the International Herald Tribune. The specific quote by ODFCH[1] relates to the apparent water holding ability of the arguments against the filter:
“The laws that mandate upper speed limits do not stop people from speeding, does that mean that we should not have those laws?” he said. “We live in a society, and societies have always imposed limits on activities that it deems are damaging.” He said. “There is nothing sacrosanct about the Internet.”
This analogy is actually a good one. It’s a pity that it isn’t complete. Yes, we have laws against speeding. Yes, we have laws against the production of Child Sexual Abuse Images. In fact, we also have laws against Child Sexual Abuse. That is, indeed, correct. There are limits to what we find acceptable, and ODFCH and I agree that these things are damaging. But our agreement stops there.
You see, while we have laws to prevent people from speeding (and they don’t actually stop people speeding), we do not mandate the placement of speed limiters in everyone’s cars because a few people[2] break the law. There would be an outcry about this. Cars have odometers that go way beyond the speed limit as it is set in Australia. But we allow people to make that choice. Do I break the law today? Can I get away with it today?[3]
These same choices are made by a much smaller group of people. We, as a society, condemn them. And we do much to prevent their activities. We feel outrage at their activities. Perhaps we should feel similar outrage with people who speed? But, in general, we don’t.
So it’s there the analogy breaks down. No-one in their right mind would advocate a speed limiter for cars, particularly one that may not consistently work. What would be the outcome of a speed limiter that occasionally refused to recognise school zones? We’d have some cars travelling at perhaps 100 km/h where they should be doing 40 km/h. Then, perhaps on the freeway, where the speed limit is 110 km/h, everyone would be forced to travel at 40 km/h. Hardly seems a good way to run some national infrastructure.
Yes, people speed, and yes, people are caught. That’s why we have Police.
Forcing everyone to travel at 40 km on a freeway is not a good idea. It would clog the highways (and the byways), some people would be able to disable their speed filter, while others would have it randomly not working. And then the blame for the inadvertent deaths of individuals caught with a faulty filter would rest on the heads of the filter forcers.
We have laws to protect people. But we also have choice. That’s what you want to take away, Our Dear Friend, Clive Hamilton, from Charles Sturt University[4], it’s not just our freedom you are after, it’s our ability to choose!
For more details: see #9, #17, #18 (but insert “roads” for “media”), #20, #25, #26, #27, oh, fuggit, just look at the whole darn lot here!
For more details about choosing what you want to see on the internet: OpenDNS.com
Tags: nocleanfeed
I have this theory of blogging which I’m trying to work out. The theory is that blogging, while part of a vicarious conversation, is really a conversation with yourself. It can be reflective and thoughtful (as well as a range of other things), but really, we’re all talking to ourselves. We talk to ourselves about what’s important to us as individuals.
It needs more work.
Tags: randomosity
I’ve been thinking a lot about what people are saying about raising children with the Internet and OMG all the porn! Actually, I was inspired by this very level headed approach. While Josh apprears to be starting out on the grueling raising of a daughter, I’m at the other end. Daughter has left home and is attempting to find her way in the world.
I’m thus contemplating how well I did in raising a daughter at the dawn of the digital era. Mind you, we didn’t have the internet early. For most of her formative years, we lived in rural towns and I don’t really think I had much to do with the Internet until I did my Diploma of Education in 1995. I remember taking her to uni with me so she could get online. I also remember thinking that it wasn’t all that impressive, after all, in those days, you really had to know what you wanted before you could find anything. There were heaps of pages created by people to show what they had found. Link farms, I think we call them now, but that’s another story. I was fairly unimpressed and really couldn’t see much value to it[1].
By the time 1998 came round, we had dial up access (in Bundaberg). I do remember watching what she was doing occasionally, but pretty much left her to her own devices. I know at times she was Up To No Good (TM), but I trusted her. From the time she was about 13 or 14, we had often gone to the video shop (Tuesday nights cheap rentals, FTW!), and I pretty much let her get anything out. This includes R rated videos. She could get them out, on one condition: That anything she didn’t understand, anything out of the ordinary, anything that angered her, anything that challenged her, we had to discuss. This meant that practically every movie needed to be discussed (mostly on the last three points).
Throughout her life, she has been able to ask me just about anything without me falling over in a faint and complaining that nice girls don’t need to know that. She has been able to watch anything she wants, provided she discusses it with me. She has had almost unfettered access to media in multiple formats. She reads and writes what she thinks.
Did I raise a monster? A psychopath? No, I raised a film and tv critic, with bachelors and masters degrees. Oh, and one of her majors was Ethics.
I suppose the moral of this story is that we need to respect our children and treat them with respect. We need to recognise that they have minds and nurture them, feed them whatever information they need, then help them make sense of it. If we treat them with respect, they will learn self-respect. If we help them to think, they will do it.
We don’t need no stinkin’ clean feed to raise healthy, happy children! In fact, we need the opposite!
Tags: nocleanfeed
One of my research interests is exploring the varied relationships people have with their technology. I have been trying to work out a process for exploring this in a way that allows me to dig deeper into these relationships, but besides working out a survey and perhaps watching people, I haven’t come up with a good approach that doesn’t put people on edge because they feel less than comfortable with their level of knowledge which is ironic given that I’m interested in how they learn.
But I was watching the Ludlum/Conroy video and it occurred to me that we see Conroy interacting with his computer in that clip. Admittedly, there isn’t much to go on but he at least seemed comfortable using the down arrow key. I think I saw a mouse beside the laptop, but he didn’t use that in that clip. It occurred to me that there is potentially a heap of, dare I say, ‘evidence’ of the kinds of interactions I’m interested on YouTube and other video sites.
On the face of that one clip, I can conclude that we have a very non-tech savvy Senate. There were perhaps three (visible) computers that I could see within the chamber – one in front of Conroy, one with Ludlam and one other with, I’m assuming[1], support people.
While videos of people intereacting with their computers may actually be a rich source of data for my research[2], I do not think watching the Senate will contribute much. I might also end up having a brain haemorrhage having to listen to Conroy over and over and over[3]. Oh, but turn down the sound and we see Conroy exhibiting very different mannerisms while reading his canned response to that when he reponds to the follow ons from Ludlum. Interesting indeed.
Tags: censorship, nocleanfeed, research
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