LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: C4IS <C4IS@EISA.NET.AU>
  To  : Linux SA <LinuxSA@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 11:17:26 +0930

I'net Bill - What to do? What to do? - Confucius

I wonder if anybody else has thought
about educating the general public
about the Internet (not for the purpose
of selling them an ISP access package,
but in the way that 4WD clubs help
their members get the best out of their
4-wheel-drive vehicles...):

Something of a social context in which
people would intentionally endeavour
to create an Internet culture and pass
it to the "next generation" of Internet
newbies...

Guiding them to useful material... if
only so that the wildly negative PR
that seems - now and again - to fill
media about the 'net doesn't (in the
absence of such social/cultural con-
texts) become a self-fulfilling prophesy
that makes it easier for people to
accept silly laws like the one we've
been discussing lately...

I, for one, think that doing the above
would be giving people a new choice:

While they'd still be able to do it alone,
or with cyber-associates, now they
would be able to meet and socialise
with people whose values might be
vastly different from the minority who
seem to get the air-time (e.g. pedo-
philes, purpetrators of 'net frauds,
online gambling, etc.)

Of course, there would be various
clubs and not all of them would share
the same values (some might find
online gambling OK, while I would
not in mine...).

But getting the more conservative
and/or lesser experienced computer
users (including some that have had
no contact with the computer and/or
Internet) into contact with the 'net via
one of these clubs (either on a period-
ic basis or even during a one-night or
afternoon intro "show & tell" presen-
tation) would ease their minds about
what the Internet's all about...

Less fear... less jumping on Harradine's
censorship bandwagon.

And - who knows? - it might even help
the economy, e.g. if some new Internet
User (who's been shown how to find
info on a new service, technique or
product happens to work it up into a
business success for him-/her-self,
right here in SA...).  It would surely
help convince the pollies, no?

Of course, it would!

So, as I've asked (rhetorically?) before:

Do you want to quash this bill...?

Or do you want to sit around sputtering
about how awful it is...? how unrespons-
ive the gov't is...? etc.

The choice is yours...  ;)

Let's hope you make the right choice!

-- 
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