This week has been the week for news stories around the issues of internet filtering. First up, I read this article about the filter that McDonalds is placing on all its wifi access . Not such a big deal. Then I read another article that same day about how the NSW education department here in Australia is going to censor access on all student laptops. This article started to make me laugh…. With quotes like
“Our internet filtering is unbreakable. We have a huge proxy array that does all the filtering. We’ve just brought that in-house and the reason we have done that is we want much tighter control over it,” said Wilson (chief information officer for the NSW education department).
To add to this lunacy it has been estimated that the system will cost an additional 245 million dollars, which is on top of the 195 million for the original laptop plan. Therefore, more money is going to be spent on filtering than will be on “real” learning resource. Not a terribly smart plan in these current economic times!!
Then to cap it all off there was this little corker from the Australian Newspaper – Australia to have a national internet filter seen only in countries like China and Iran. Why on earth would we spend tax payers money on such a system? Besides that, who decides what is appropriate and not appropriate to view? The article suggested that “Compulsory internet censorship for all Australians could ban controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.” Of all the things to censor, these two seemed the most “controversial”?
How do we teach young people to discern and become analytical thinkers when bureaucrats think it best to play big brother with the greatest and largest information source available? This I believe is a marvelous example of destructive technology. Learning tools that are used to play big brother instead of educator and learner.