Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
NPR science correspondent Shankar Vedantam had a great spot on NPR’s Morning Edition today about the disputes among social scientists over the impact of violent video games on kids. ["It's A Duel: How Do Violent Video Games Affect Kids?"] You won’t be surprised to hear I wholeheartedly agree with Texas A&M psychologist Chris Ferguson, who [...]
John Naughton, a professor at the Open University in the U.K. and a columnist for the U.K. Guardian, has a new essay out entitled “Only a Fool or Nicolas Sarkozy Would Go to War with Facebook.” I enjoyed it because it touches upon two interrelated concepts that I’ve spent years writing about: “moral panic” and [...]
[UPDATE Feb. 2012: This little essay eventually led to an 80-page working paper, "Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle."] In this essay, I will suggest that (1) while “moral panics” and “techno-panics” are nothing new, their cycles seem to be accelerating as new communications and information networks and platforms [...]
I spend a lot of time here trying to debunk media “moral panics,” “techno-panics,” or unfounded hysteria over the impact of commercialism in general on kids. To believe what some politicians and regulatory agitators have to say, today’s youth always seem at the precipice of the moral abyss. Our misguided youth are seemingly all going [...]
Many folks are discussing Christopher Ferguson’s latest paper on “The School Shooting / Violent Video Game Link: Causal Relationship or Moral Panic?” And with good reason. It’s an important look at how “moral panics” develop in modern society, in this case around video games. [Moral panics is a subject I have written on at length [...]
Regular readers will recall my great interest in video games and the public policy debates surrounding efforts to regulate “violent” games in particular. One thing I bring up in almost every essay I write on this subject is how fears about kids and video games are almost always overblown and that kids can typically separate [...]
I’ve spent a lot of time in recent years trying to debunk various myths about online child safety or at least put those risks into perspective. Too often, press reports and public policy initiatives are being driven by myths, irrational fears, or unjustified “moral panics.” Luckily, the New York Times reports that there’s another study [...]
My friend Larry Magid, one of America’s leading Internet safety experts, has an outstanding column over at the Yahoo Kids “Connected Parent” site entitled “Is the Internet as Dangerous as Drunk Driving?” In it, he discusses the surprising results of a recent survey of 1,000 moms of teenagers commissioned by McAfee and conducted by Harris [...]
This week, I have been up at Harvard University participating in another meeting of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF), of which I am a member. The ISTTF was organized earlier this year pursuant to an agreement between 49 state attorneys general (AGs) and social networking giant MySpace.com. A group of experts from academia, [...]
To: Hon. David Patterson, Governor, State of New York From: Adam Thierer, life-long gamer and Senior Fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation Date: July 17, 2008 Re: That video game bill (A. 11717/ S. 6401) you have been asked to sign Dear Gov. Patterson: I write today to ask a few questions about a [...]
May 28, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
