THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 16, 1997 TAG: 9702140717
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Dave Addis
LENGTH: 63 lines
If you are baffled by cyberspace in general and the Internet in particular, here is a basic rule that can help you sort things out:
When you hear an adult describe the Internet as magic-carpet ride to a cotton-candy land of universal enlightenment, you are listening to somebody who hasn't the vaguest idea whereof he speaks.
Clueless, as the current slang would have it.
Sadly, the president of the United States fell smack into that category in his State of the Union address when he urged something of a schoolyard jihad to ensure that ``every 12-year-old must be able to log on to the Internet.''
Seven days later, police in Newark, N.J., revealed that a 12-year-old girl had been conned into making videotapes of herself in a series of sex acts, and mailing them off to what she thought was a lovesick 15-year-old she'd met on the Internet.
What she'd really met was a 47-year-old, 400-pound pervert from Cleveland whose basement held clues that he'd been computer-baiting little girls across the country.
It would be unfair to blame this on Bill Clinton, or to place too much emphasis on this one event. Bogeymen who prey on children are found in lots of places outside cyberspace.
But just as we would monitor where a 12-year-old rides her bike, we should monitor where she rides her computer. And, right now, the Internet is not a proper place for an unchaperoned 12-year-old.
As a four-year veteran of the Internet, I do not believe it should be controlled, censored or diluted. At times it is a valuable source of information. At other times it is a hodgepodge of the weird, the profane and the wholly unreliable. The trick is in understanding the difference.
Not long ago, Pierre Salinger made an international ass of himself by waving a report that supposedly proved that a U.S. Navy missile had shot down TWA Flight 800 off the East Coast. It turned out to be a conspiracy-flake document, long disproved, that had been floating in cyberspace for months.
Salinger, to that point, had been a respected author, news reporter and former press secretary to John F. Kennedy. Now, he may never recover his reputation.
If the nuances of the Internet are too tricky for a man of his stature, what is the likely outcome for a 12-year-old?
Suggestions like Clinton's are well-meaning, but they are part of a panic assault aimed at parents who might well believe that if their 12-year-old has not yet mastered computers, he or she already is doomed to a lifetime of flipping burgers or parking cars for the electronic literati.
It is a cruel, and foolish, premise.
This is not a Luddite argument. The future for computer-aided communication and education truly is bright and limitless. Computer skills certainly should be emphasized in our schools.
But in developing in our children a facility for critical thought, there is no substitute for emphasizing reading, writing and mathematics - especially for a 12-year-old.
Those are the skills that lead to analytical ability and intellectual maturity. Only when children have mastered them should they be turned loose in a world where it can be difficult to know whether the guy on the other end of the line is an achy-heart teen-ager or a 400-pound, cellar-dwelling monster in Cleveland. MEMO: Dave Addis is the editor of Commentary. Reach him at 446-2726, or
addis(AT)worldnet.att.net.