Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
In my ongoing work on technopanics, I’ve frequently noted how special interests create phantom fears and use “threat inflation” in an attempt to win attention and public contracts. In my next book, I have an entire chapter devoted to explaining how “fear sells” and I note how often companies and organizations incite fear to advance [...]
Via TechDirt, “The news media always need a bogeyman,” says Cracked.com in their well-placed attack on techno-panics, “
In case you missed it, Saturday Night Live recently mocked the news media’s habit of inciting techno-panics (and any other panic they can). Enjoy. After the fear-inspiring ad…
Sen. Amy Klobuchar just released a letter to Facebook demanding the site require “a prominent safety button or link on the profile pages of users under the age of 18″—akin to the so-called “panic button” app launched earlier this week by the UK’s Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre (CEOP). She doesn’t seem to realize that this [...]
Congressmen working on national intelligence and homeland security either don’t know how to secure their own home Wi-Fi networks (it’s easy!) or don’t understand why they should bother. If you live outside the Beltway, you might think the response to this problem would be to redouble efforts to educate everyone about the importance of personal [...]
I spend a lot of my time as an Internet policy analyst railing against elitist suggestions that “ordinary” users are just too dumb to take care of themselves online, no matter how effectively technology empowers them to make decisions for themselves about the content they and their children consume, what data they allow to be [...]
Ryan Radia brought to my attention this excellent Slate piece by Vaughan Bell entitled, “Don’t Touch That Dial! A History of Media Technology Scares, from the Printing Press to Facebook.” It touches on many of the themes I’ve discussed here in my essays on techno-panics, fears about information overload, and the broader optimists v. pessimist [...]
Adam has done yeoman’s work for years pointing out, and arguing against, the phenomenon of techno-panic as it relates to children. That’s not the only area in which techno-panic can tighten its grip on the neck of common sense and the constitution, of course. But here’s a delight I ran across this morning: the Los [...]
My friends Anne Collier and Larry Magid, two of America’s leading experts on Internet safety matters, have just released a terrific new “Online Safety 3.0” manifesto. Anne is the editor of Net Family News, Larry pens the “Safe and Secure” blog for CNet News, and together they run ConnectSafely.org. Everything they do is must-reading for [...]
When it comes to theories about how to best raise kids, I’m a big believer in what might be referred to “a resiliency approach” to child-rearing. That is, instead of endlessly coddling our children and hovering over them like “helicopter parents,” as so many parents do today, I believe it makes more sense to instill [...]
February 13, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
