CYNSATIONAL
“February
was a Leap Year, it contained an extra day. Some cultures believe
that the extra day is for you to do something exciting and different;
take a leap of faith so to speak. In technology circles, taking a
leap of faith is upgrading your system operating systems. The more
and more features and code put into existing OS is creating more downgrades
than upgrades. It takes a full back up, prayer and time to install
a computer upgrade. People now fear the worst. The extra leap day
gives network administrators another 24 hours to figure out what went
wrong. Not the personal day leap year was supposed to provide people.”
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cyberbarf
EXAMINE THE NET WAY OF
LIFE
PARENTAL
UNCONTROL OBSERVATION
PBS had
a feature program on recently about the role of parenting and children's
use of the web. The main point of the feature was that parents were battling
their own children over the control of technology.
A generation
ago, parents had control over the main distraction device that the household
had: the television set. If a child did not do their chores or their homework
or got into trouble, no television was the punishment. Such was the transition
from corporal punishment to deal making in the parental manual of raising
children.
But today,
the modern household's television is not the center of attention. A teenager
has access to cell phones, text messaging, and web social sites. It is the
latter, with his lurking predators and inappropriate content that has parents
on edge. Some parents have all but surrendered control over the digital
lifestyle directly to their children, whether they are mature enough to
handle the responsibility and dangers of it. News reports are filled with
cases where young, impressionable kids are connected with criminal deviants
who prey on the naive. Most of those stories end badly.
Parents are
generally protective. They are aware that the evils of society are encroaching
more and more into their homes. The four walls of a nice, secure family
residence cannot block the images and information pouring in through the
walls from the broadband cables.
One mother's
solution was to have the family computer placed in the kitchen. So when
she was working on dinner, she could observe her son's Internet activities.
The concept was that she would be monitoring her son's activities because
she was in the same room. However, she even admitted that when she would
come by the computer screen, it would go blank. Her son had a fail-safe
privacy key to blank out what he was viewing at any moment. So, mom was
not as sophisticated as her son in regard to computer technology. She also
did not have the strength or desire to turn the electronic tables on him.
She sort of shrugged her shoulders in the conclusion that she was doing
the best she could under the circumstances.
Her son's
viewpoint on the situation was also revealing: he thought that his privacy
rights trumped his mother's parental control in regard to his web surfing.
What he was saying or doing on his web pages was solely his business.
Other students
concurred in that statement. Many high schoolers on social networks use
their myspace or facebook pages to interact with their friends. Others use
it as a game to see how many new “friends” they can generate with
their pages. Many students are aware of the dangers of on-line predators
and stalkers. Others seem to not care about the consequences of their actions
because on the net, they can change from timid loners into totally different
personalities. A quiet, dowdy school girl can transform herself into a Goth
skin queen just to get the attention she is missing in her real life. And
her parents would have no clue unless they stumbled across her web cam broadcasts.
The real
disconnect between parent and child is this: while children are claiming
that their web surfing is a private matter that does not need parental supervision,
the images, text and matters that the child is putting out on the web have
no privacy filter. A flirtatious image to one friend can immediately be
copied and sent to hundreds of thousands of people to the embarrassment
of the child and eventually their family. A child's “private”
thoughts and images are not private on the web but one won't realize that
until it is too late.
RAPTER
AGENT
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THE
COMBINATION OF FOOD AND POLITICS - - - Ski's IMMORTAL COMBAT IRON
CANDIDATE RETURNS JUST IN TIME FOR THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
NEW ISSUES CAN BE SEEN AT THE NEWS STAND AT pindermedia.com.
DON'T
MISS THE SIZZLING SATIRE, THE FRIED EGOS, AND THE SHARP WIT OF AMERICAN
POLITICS.
From
the Creator of Rapter Agent and Dr. Philistine: IRON
CANDIDATE!
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iToon
THE AMERICAN BORG
