Online – Don't Gel Too Soon

ISIS: They May Hate Us but They Thrive on Our Stuff

Like most of us, I don’t think I’ve felt like this since 9/11, although Paris may feel scary in a different way because the scope and savvy of ISIS makes Al Qaeda look primitive in comparison.

I spend hours on the Web every day, and probably understand the reach, creativity and strategic smarts of ISIS outreach more than most of my peers. It’s kind of amazing that people committed to such a regressive lifestyle are so adept at using modern methods to build it. They’ve been using Twitter, Whatsapp and other basic tools for some time but even though I raised two gamers, it never occurred to me until I heard it this morning that online game consoles are great, almost invisible, ISIS communication tools.

There have been hints though, in our popular culture. Portraits of these tactics have appeared in TV shows as disparate in audience as NCIS and The Good Wife: plots about the online recruiting American teenagers for homegrown violence and about exploiting western commitment to privacy and free speech and thought, as well as the seemingly insurmountable gap between the world that nurtures these terrorists and the world we have tried to create for our own kids.

Of course, that dissonance means nothing if your goal is to return us all to a particularly fierce, and very old, version of holiness. It’s so sad to note, too, that our wonderful technology is once again taking us away from all we’d hope it would be.

Online Politics Conference Part 2: Lots of Interesting People

The Online Politics Conference is over and the basic coverage has been excellent. Since I’m late writing these (see yesterday’s post for why) I’m wandering through the two days reflecting on what I saw and heard – so join me.
Here are some of the great personalities who were part of the Politics Online Conference earlier this week. The woman you see here, Debra Bowen, is the Secretary of State of California. She’s also a savvy Facebook and Twitter user and completely accessible. She speaks plain English about policy, politics and just about everything else, including the changes she hopes to make in California in online electoral reform. Later, she showed up at a panel on the youth vote in jeans, her hair pulled back, no ceremony, no nothing. Keep an eye on her – she’s got a lovely future I think.

This is Jeremy Bird, Harvard Divinity Grad and Deputy Director of Organizing for America – the successor to the Obama online campaign. Shrewd, funny and knowledgeable, he echoed something we heard from all the Obama people at the conference: integrate online into every aspect and every major meeting of the campaign. They need to be a seamless part of the team, not stuck in the basement. Keep everyone in the loop and they take ownership. “I”f you don’t know what it’s like on the ground, you will fail.”

These two guys, Larry Irving and Mike McCurry, were part of a broadband panel. Irving ran NTIA in the Clinton Administration; McCurry, of course, was Bill Clinton’s White House Press Secretary and left with his integrity intact. “Broadband and access to broadband is an indispensable tool for every American” says McCurry. The panel basically made a case for broadband as a tool for health care, education, economic advancement and more. It’s not just cool to get Hulu, it’s critical to our growth, the panelists maintain. It can also save considerable money, particularly in health care, by making the best experts available, remotely, to any doctor anywhere.

Things weren’t all nuts and bolts though. One panel, probably, along with a riveting exploration of the youth vote, was my favorite. It’s title: The Visual Frontier: How the Arts, Pop Culture and Business Innovates the Way We Consume and Use Information. So whose eyes are those to the left? They belong to Josh Klein, a “hacker” and wise man of technology. He and the others in this panel have a combination of wisdom, originality and articulateness that made this panel a real pleasure.

Probably the other really intellectually exciting panel was How Are We Changing Because of What We Do Online? Its star: Judith Donath of the wonderful MIT Media Lab. Here’s a bit of what she said:

The information world is making many things no longer ephemeral the way they once were. We used to be a country of constant reinvention (You could move to the west, change your name, and start over.) We’d move around, and if finished college more than five years ago, we lost our old friends and reinvented ourselves. Now that’s coming to an end. Things written on Usenet years ago comes back to haunt us.

Now our online identity is our most long term and long lasting in the world we are building around us. All that we’ve clicked on is retained somewhere along with shopping records and more. What do we do with the vast amount of the past trailing us around, and how does it affect how we see politicians and each other?

So. Plenty to think about from this gifted and influential group – politicians and “big thinkers” alike.

OF COURSE IT COULDN’T LAST – RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE WEB

I just spent an hour listening to NYT reporter Kurt Eichenwald on a talk show describing the current state of Internet child pornography. It’s just so sad.

I remember as far back as 1998, when I helped launch an Internet safety campaign called America Links Up. We organized teach-ins, a TV program, a family website and a lot of other material to help parents keep their kids safe on line. I, stupidly, thought people were a little overwrought about the whole thing. If you were honest with kids, they could be trusted. [ASIDE: I am, I often observe, a walking demographic… here for the George Lakoff nurturing parent.] How could we deprive them when the Internet was, as John Perry Barlow said, "the most important discovery since fire?"

I was so besotted that I was incorrigible. My boss at iVillage, whom I represented at American Links Up, used to call me a Web rat. But it’s a sign of my eternal naivete that I never thought it would get as bad as it (apparently) is. AND that so many kids would log on when parents weren’t looking and participate. ( If the stories are true, it’s not just toddlers and preteens being exploited, it is also older teens getting sucked in and abused as well. )

We raised our kids in a style very similar to that described by long-time Wired writer Jon Katz, writing as Wired’s Netizen. In 1996 he wrote a kids’ bill of rights on line – linking web rights to responsibilities met. I wonder how that would play just ten years later.

In addition, I still don’t understand – when there are so many Law and Order SVU and a dozens of other programs portraying the dangers of these people – why young people would engage in this stuff to begin with. Either too many kids are too lonely to care or we just aren’t paying enough attention. Parents have to work and if they want decent housing they often have long commutes. They need help.

So what do you think? Is the Web as scary as Eichenwald portrays it? Is some of it hype? How do we keep kids safe and still help them to savor the Internet in all its wonders and opportunities? Holler out some ideas….