Some say that exposure to violence in gaming, online video, etc., is creating a violent culture. Tom says it's not that straightforward. Rather than regulate violence, we should understand it better.
Good points all. As to reading teaching us to be shallow, I offer examples of people who appear to be shallow -- or at least not tuned to traditional values -- yet possess extraordinary literary skills.
Video games? We've been around the block so many times on this issue: videos, television, horror comics, novels, penny dreadfuls (okay, going back before my time now).
The claim that violent content triggers violence in people otherwise not-disposed to violence has always been twaddle, remains twaddle, and always will be twaddle. Of course, violent people enjoy violent content.
That's pretty much my view, Nicole. I finally took the decisive step and became a Vulcan; humans are just too disorderly for me!
There may be a different issue lurking under both trends (violence and stupidity) which is a shallow emotional stimulation to substitute for deeper intellectual engagement. Does reading teach us to be "deep" and video teach us to be "shallow", I wonder? Are we conditioned to want to be given answers instead of learning methods whereby we could obtain them as needed? In the long term these may be the more relevant questions.
I agree with the points shared by both you and Mary, Tom. Violent videos and violent games don't create violent people. Do they provoke the violent thoughts already within some people, or perhaps energize them in a dangerous way? That's harder to say. But that, again, has more to do with a person's mental state than it does with the content.
We probably don't need nearly as much violent content as exists. But we don't need as much stupid content either. I recently saw some really horribly stupid meme on YouTube of people making videos of themselves trying to eat cinnamon -- which is actually dangerous; yet it caught on and more and more people started making videos of themselves trying it.
I don't think the problem is content. I think the problem is people.
Your point is also great, Mary. I think that the Internet is testing our ability to balance rights and obligations in a bunch of new ways. The issue of violent or abusive online content is one we've seen come up many times recently (in NJ for example just in the last month).
I think personally that you have to start with the notion that where "communication behavior" is already regulated (you can't make obscene or threatening phone calls or incite to riot) I think the presumption must be that the same behavior online is regulated. The question is whether, as some have argued, the "speed" of the Internet creates wrongs so fast that traditional means can't right them. I think that's a dangerous argument, as I think the arguments that say that violent video games are worse than kids playing cops and robbers with realistic guns.
Tom: Great point. Violence is typically the product of a diseased mind or of a deprived and/or brutal upbringing. Violence online can exacerbate the internal problem, but IMO it's an inside job -- inside the person, not caused by an outside force on a video game.
We don't need one more reason to control content on the Net.
All that said, I do think there is an awful lot of bad, even poisonous, content online that no one should see. And if viewed it can cause trauma and perhaps an insensitivity to violence. That's worth considering. But in the main, filtering content voluntarily can prevent this from happening.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
50 billion household devices will be on the Internet by 2020, according to Cisco. And we're hearing foreign governments are hacking our infrastructure. Surely our refrigerators are next!
YouTube's move to a partial pay-for-view model could help relieve a dearth of good new content but it could also complicate debates in many parts of the world over payment by content providers for delivery of their material to customers.
That's what Larry Page said on Google's earnings call, referring to the conjunction of mobile and the cloud. Well, let's chart it then! We need to be thinking about an Internet where 90% of our traffic goes to 70 destinations within 40 miles of us.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
EU operators are considering joining up to create a pan-European network to reduce competitive overbuild and cost. This might lower costs and focus operators on higher-level, more interesting services.
Apple may want to do a TV offering, but to meet its goal it would have to address three specific issues that have been exposed by earlier attempts to make Internet TV work.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
The new UltraViolet online DRM model has people upset, but the question we should ask ourselves is whether we want a flexible model to harmonize content owner and content consumer rights, or a one-takes-all model that probably results in less online content.
Mobile TV is everywhere, and yet, nowhere. Nobody uses it – because the handsets aren't good, the pricing is too high, and the coverage is not good enough. But Qualcomm's FloTV Personal TV aims to change all of that.
The IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Monaco kicked into high gear today, and we've already begun to see news emerging from that lovely city-state by the sea.
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