[Hidden-tech] safe surfing tips

[Rich]

I can't resist stepping in on this one.

As you might guess we were pretty early on the tech curve - my son 
started at the keyboard
at 18 months and (now a few past 30) worked at Red Hat before it moved 
to NC, is on his 3 dot.com startup,
both he and his sister (of similar age, and running a number of blogs, 
as well as both being fair java programmers)
helped copy disks for a prior software company of mine -- we just gave 
our granddaughter an XO  (OLPC)
for her 3rd birthday and she said (really) "this is a dream come true"-- 
btw, their grandfather
was a plane designer and their great-grand father was a mechanic and ran 
a chauffeuring service
in the teen's -- So hi-tech and being adventurous is a norm for us.

No way we could protect them by blocking - and they'd defeat any 
protection we could devise,
more over, we firmly believe that understanding is the real answer -- my 
wife (a professor of early
childhood education) says if they haven't been taught your morals and 
standards by the age
of 12 - it's over - they are their own person's by then.  They also need 
to be trusted to
learn their own way.

Net-Net: blocking the obvious age inappropriate material might be worth 
some effort,
but heck regular broadcast tv is worse then some of what's on the net, and
teaching safely - esp understanding personal privacy and that you can't 
take back
what's online is the best basics you can give them.

No matter how you try -- they grow up and have their own ideas - kinda a 
pain :)
Rich



Chris Hoogendyk wrote:
> Maria Korolov (Trombly) wrote:
>   
>> I've got the opposite problem with my kids. They're steadily training 
>> me to be technically incompetent. I'm having trouble turning on the 
>> TV, even, with all the stuff they've got connected to it.
>>
>> I've given up trying to monitor their computer use (except in terms of 
>> the amount of time they spend online). To start with, my daughter runs 
>> Linux on her laptop. I don't even know how to use Linux. In fact, she 
>> does all the tech support for the household. If I were to install any 
>> kind of monitoring program -- first, she would be the one I would ask 
>> to install it. Second, she would laugh in my face. Third, she'd humor 
>> me, then disable it the minute I looked away.
>>     
>
>   
>

-- 
Rich Roth
CEO On-the-net

Bringing you complex online systems since the net was young
http://www.tnrglobal.com - Blog: http://www.rizbang.com
Helping move the world:  http://www.earththrives.com