| Thursday, February 15, 2007 |
12:20 - Witness the birth of a plastic turkey
http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/4598
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Boy, check out this marvelous example of a misleading, bait-and-switch headline: U.S. Senator: It's time to ban Wikipedia in libraries, schools.
If true, surely cause for outrage; banning Wikipedia is something the Chinese government does, not ours, right? But wait—read the actual article:
Early in January, Stevens introduced Senate bill 49, which among other things, would require that any school or library that gets federal Internet subsidies would have to block access to interactive Web sites, including social networking sites, and possibly blogs as well. It appears that the definition of those sites is so vague that it could include sites such as Wikipedia, according to commentators. It would certainly ban MySpace.
(Emphasis added.) So it's not about Wikipedia at all, but about social networking sites where child predators are known to hang out. Wikipedia is a complete red herring here. This is just a proposed law with an overly broad definition; no library or school in the country would think of banning Wikipedia under the same aegis as a blacklist against sites like MySpace, and Stevens certainly never suggested that they should.
Or, as the very first commenter put it:
The headline of this blog is completely misleading. It claims the senator is specifically going after Wikipedia. But the blog article says, "it appears that the definition... is so vague that it COULD INCLUDE [emphasis added] sites such as Wikipedia, according to commentators." That does not sound like something you would attribute to the senator... it is something you would attribute to the commentators. In other words: "Commentators: Senator's plan would ban Wikipedia in schools and libraries".
But it's Ted Stevens, who we all love to pick on. And while I'm no Ted "Bridge to Nowhere" Stevens fan, it drives me nuts to see someone lambasted for an idea he didn't even have. His infamous "series of tubes" definition of the Internet, as I've said before, makes perfect sense when you realize that he's a layman who very likely had the Internet explained to him as a series of pipes, which is exactly the metaphor that my previous company of seven years has used in making its entire business case selling networking infrastructure. Pipes, tubes—what's the difference? Apparently everything, if what you've got in your head is a cartoon of some doddering old guy waving his cane around and reminiscing about how many "tubes" were in his field radio in Doubleya-Doubleya-Eye-Eye.
And in the case of this law, what's clear to me is that he's still a layman about the Internet, and has only a vague understanding that there's a difference between regular websites and "interactive" websites, and it's the latter ones that have the capability for inter-user communication and, thus, predators. What he doesn't grok is that when sites like Wikipedia are added to the mix, the line between "interactive" and "non-interactive" becomes very blurry indeed, and once that's pointed out to him there's simply no way that the proposed law will not be amended so that sensationalist headlines like this will no longer be possible.
But even Glenn Reynolds can't resist the temptation: "TED STEVENS: Ban Wikipedia!"
This is how urban legends get started—the ones that outlive the people who gave birth to them.
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Brian Tiemann
