I Have a Face
By David, Grade 5, Jeanne Sauve French Immersion School, London,
Ontario, Canada
I have hair,
So my head's not bare.
I have ears,
So I can hear.
I have eyes,
So things may maximize.
I have a nose,
Because the nose always knows.
I have a mouth,
So I can shout.
I have teeth,
So I can have treats.
And I have a face,
So I can put those things some place. (n.p.)
David is an Internet writer who submitted this poem to KidNews,
a site for kids' writing I started in February, 1995. David has
a face which has organized for him an admirably coherent sense
of his universe. The Internet, on the other hand, has no face.
It is an enormous, alarmingly fast-growing blob that reminds me
of a frightening dream I had as a child. In the dream, an amoeba-like
blob grew and grew and grew. As it grew, I became more and more
frightened, but I didn't know what the object of my fear really
was. It threatened to crowd me out of myself, to suffocate me,
and it was its lack of shape, its amorphous slitheryness and absence
of definition that made it worse than any monster I could imagine.
Sometimes this growing blob seemed to me to be the end of the
world.
The Internet sometimes gives me the same sensation...a slithery,
ever- growing monster that becomes more dangerous, more chaotic,
more lost, more dizzying, more frightening as it grows. It is
an electronic fun-house mirror of all we know that is growing
so fast that I can't really say it's evolving...a word that presupposes
an organizational principle. The other day I did a simple search
using Alta Vista, Digital's robust search engine. I typed in 'kids'
and a few seconds later was told that I had 300,000 choices. Somewhere
in that vast lonely crowd KidNews' 4000 authors were chirping
away.
Over the past year I've done hundreds of Yahoo searches and found
this admirably ambitious indexing tool to be increasingly less
useful, while full-blown search engines like Alta Vista have become
simply absurd. There are explanations, of course. There are skillful
uses of Boolean algebra. But my goal was to assume the role of
a new Internet user looking for something worthwhile for my kids.
I had hoped for a short list and instead got the equivalent of
the yellow pages of an enormous urban phone directory. It reminded
me of my childhood nightmare.
When I first opened KidNews to public view on my university server
in February, 1995, the World Wide Web was a relatively new phenomenon
mostly known only to academics, computer junkies, government officials,
and forward-thinking business people. Within a year, KidNews grew
to the point that it was attracting nearly as many hits as our
entire university server. It was taking up too much band width
and not enough people could get in, plus there were enough shutdowns
and server problems so that I decided to move to a commercial
site. I decided I would try to sell sponsorships, and try to run
KidNews like a real newspaper hoping that it would at least pay
for itself.
To my surprise, finding sponsors was not easy, and with over 60,000
hits a month and hundreds of new submissions, I didn't have time
to market my site and be its editor at the same time. I had to
make a choice, and I chose being editor and neglected its marketing.
My third alternative would have been to take out a loan, hire
some helpers, and turn KidNews into a real business with ad people,
marketing specialists, assistant editors, and the whole nine yards.
This presumably would have allowed KidNews to grow enormously
from 55,000 or so hits a month to a million or so. That would
have put me into some numbers of interest to advertisers, but
it would also have meant a huge influx of new submissions and
a ton of new heavy maintenance required in setting all the new
writing in hypertext mark-up language (HTML) and posting new submissions
in my menus and various files. It would also have turned me into
a manager, which I had hoped to avoid at all costs. KidNews is
what's known as a heavy maintenance site, very different from
the vast majority of sites that post a few static pieces of information
and sit there passively hoping for visitors. These low maintenance
sites are very cost effective, very easy to run, and threaten
to swamp the Web in a drab sea of mediocrity.
One of the seeming virtues of the Internet is that it has made
publishing an almost purely democratic activity. For very little
money, just about everyone and anyone with a little computer know-how
could open their own Web site and begin a publishing fiefdom.
Being able to speak to the world has always been the favored privilege
of the wealthy and powerful, but the Internet changed that...
at least for a time. But gradually this pure democracy is receding
under the volume of its own mass, and the power of money and privilege
is threatening to engulf the Web. KidNews is illustrative. Beginning
as a one-person publishing venue by a teacher (myself) and a bunch
of kids around the world, KidNews grew rapidly in relatively uncrowded
field. Before long schools began publishing their own work, even
though KidNews offered to do it for them. Other kids' sites sprang
up by the dozen, but the biggest change was the emergence of corporate
kids' sites by Disney, toy companies, cereal and kids' food manufacturers,
publishers, software companies, and Internet entrepreneurs. Armed
with games and promotions that gathered information and lists
of product buyers, many of these sites aggressively pursued buyers
rather than provided genuine services, and nearly all of them
entered the field as low-maintenance sites, taking a great deal
more than they gave back.
According to a recent study by the Center for Media Education
(CME) of Washington, DC, commercial Web site exploitation of children
has already reached an alarming stage:
This investigation has uncovered a number of disturbing new practices.
They pose two kinds of threats: 1) invasion of children's privacy
through solicitation of personal information and tracking of online
computer use; and 2) exploitation of vulnerable, young computer
users through new unfair and deceptive forms of advertising. Many
of the practices... are already in place. Industry sources expect
other, more problematic practices to be rolled out in the near
future. (n.p.)
While criticized for being a bit too shrill by free speech absolutists
and Internet freedom advocates, the study nonetheless describes
practices that are dubious at best and increasingly setting the
trend in this harshly competitive market:
Marketers have devised a variety of techniques to collect detailed
data and to compile individual profiles on children. For example,
children are offered free gifts such as T-shirts or chances to
win prizes like portable CD players if they will fill out online
surveys about themselves. Tracking technologies make it possible
to monitor every interaction between a child and an advertisement.
The ultimate goal is to create personalized interactive ads designed
to "microtarget" the individual child. (CME, n.p.)
In order to attract kids to these surveys, sites provide games
and activities that lure them:
Entire electronic advertising "environments" have been built to
entice children to spend countless hours playing with such popular
product "spokescharacters" as Tony the Tiger, Chester Cheetah,
and Snap! Crackle! & Pop! Interactive forms of product placement
are being developed to encourage children to click on icons in
their favorite games and play areas and immediately be transported
to advertising sites. (CME, n.p.)
Unlike the numerous low-impact sites swamping much of the Net
in drab mediocrity, these are expensive, flashy sites increasingly
replete with Java bells and whistles, animations, and advanced
uses of Internet technology. Yet, at the same time, they are mostly
low-maintenance sites that use computer technology to create an
illusion of personal contact. So even though the technology may
be expensive, the sites are often mechanical and, in the long
run, cheap and easy to maintain.
As a software designer and author, I've always resented the notion
that computers are somehow impersonal, a priori, and that users
are invariably being manipulated by lifeless electronic impulses,
in effect, turning the users into quasi robots. Computers are
authored media, the same as books, and good software conveys the
creativity, intelligence, and essential values of software authors.
The flip side of this assertion is that bad, exploitive, and destructive
software should be held to the same authorship standards as books
and magazines. It's not the computer's fault; it's the fault of
people who develop this stuff. Similarly, it's easy to depersonalize
the Internet and ascribe to it these roboticizing attributes.
But the Internet is really an authored medium, too, but one so
large that it is turning amorphous, faceless, and beyond control
or convenient differentiation. It's hard to describe it without
being reminded that it sounds like an organism riddled with metastasizing
cancer.
Trying to impose a moral order on the Internet, however, is an
equally disquieting problem because governments and controlling
agents that select and censor Internet material so often remind
us of tyranny. It would be a monumental irony if this beast that
began in the form of nearly perfect democracy could end up being
an instrument of the most colossal thought-control totalitarianism
ever devised. The U.S. government is only one among many governments
that has attempted to legislate the moral content of the Internet.
Emerging to counter these forces are advocates for user and author
rights.
According to Justin D'Onofrio, 15, writing for the 19 June 1996
Netizen:
Children need to know that they have certain rights: the right
to stand up to adults; the right to talk with their political
leaders; and, most importantly, the right to comprehend the rights
they have been given. (n.p.)
Jonathan Katz, Editor of Wired and Hotwired's 'Media Rant,' likens
kids' Internet rights to rights of various minority and oppressed
groups:
These kids, it seemed to me, have inalienable rights of access
to their rich new culture. (It has become)... clear that children
are not being given truthful information about danger and violence.
Middle-class computer users are far less likely than their inner-city
counterparts to ever be in real personal danger. The fact that
the media ignores the real-world danger in favor of hyping the
perils imagined online is what got me going. I hope kids, especially
older kids who act responsibly, will be accorded some of the basic
rights and dignities that other groups - women, blacks, gays -
are fighting for and winning. Culture and technology are critical
to the young. The Internet is their medium. Nobody should have
the right to arbitrarily throw them off it or restrict their access
without just cause. (n.p.)
Katz is an ardent critic of such software control mechanisms as
Surfwatch which he describes as 'Software that blocks kids' online
freedom.' He says that Net Nanny, another software screening tool,
keeps 'kids safe whether they want it or not,' and while such
groups as the Frontier Foundation work against censorship for
adults, children's rights are virtually ignored.
Ultimately schools will have a huge impact on children's access
to Internet freedom. While surprisingly slow in gaining access
to so rich an educational resource, schools are gradually climbing
onto the Web. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, however, that
the content of curriculum falls within the control of school authorities.
In its controversial Hazelwood decision over a decade ago, the
court ruled that even student newspapers were a part of a school
curriculum and that the content of such newspapers could be controlled
by school authorities. As schools access Internet material for
their curricula, the use of 'censoring' software will undoubtedly
become universal. And the content of the Web seeping into the
schools will undoubtedly provoke parent and community involvement
that is highly protective. Teachers, in the interest of avoiding
battles and reducing Internet overload, will be motivated to channel
Internet content to a trickle of carefully controlled, essentially
conservative sites that match broad (which is to say very safe)
school materials guidelines.
The attitudes of parents are far less predictable. KidNews requires
signed parents' permission by slow mail before posting e-mail
addresses of kids seeking pen-pals. Hundreds of parents have submitted
such forms, most of them eager for the 'opportunity' for their
kids to converse with other kids around the world. But other parents
are considerably more cautious, some of them bordering on paranoia.
After KidNews ran an innocuous story by a Cambridge, Massachusetts
sixth grader reporting that his school sponsored a gay rights
history week, several parents wrote angry letters condemning KidNews
for exposing kids to information about homosexuality. One parent,
involved in advocating safe sites for kids in her region, said
she was removing KidNews from her recommended list and would warn
parents and teachers because I had run the Cambridge story.
According to Rebecca Kochenderfer, Editor of Edusource Web Reviews,
an on-line newsgroup newsletter, 'The Internet truly is a global
community and like any community I suppose it pays to be 'street
smart.' We'll just have to train our children, students, and ourselves
to treat the Internet like we would our telephone, television
and front door.' (n.p.) Clearly the Internet is a public environment,
a lot less dangerous than streets, malls, and public places and
mostly less insidious than television. But it is a public arena,
and e-mail is an electronic point of intrusion...a point of personal
contact with faceless outsiders not afforded yet by TV. No amount
of advocacy for freedom will erase fears by substantial segments
of the population who want access by their children at no risk
of exposure to the Internet's sometimes ugly underbelly. And access
without risk is a prescription for regulation and government control.
Indeed, the concluding recommendations from the Center for Media
Education study called for government intervention: 'Given the
inability of most parents to monitor their children's activities
online, and the unlikely prospect of adequate industry self-regulation,
the best hope for children is a regulatory framework which will
give them the protection they need.' (n.p.)
On a brief stop not so long ago on the light-speed clock of Internet
time travel, I had a notion that the Web had the potential to
revolutionize children's literacy. Hypertext, afterall, is text
and requires reading. And interactivity, among other things, requires
writing. These activities have fallen into shocking decline in
the U.S. as a result of the alarming increase of TV viewing by
children. The X-generation represented the first wave of post-literate,
image saturated children, and in America these X'ers posted horrible
scores in reading, writing, math, and general knowledge compared
to children in other nations and past generations of Americans.
Then along came the Web, and kids started reading and writing
again. They often spent more time using computers than watching
TV, and I began feeling more optimistic about the future of reading
and writing.
But then along came Java and various animation, sound, video,
and interactive helper applications that could be activated by
browsers. Just as in the early 1980's in the world of computer
applications, hypertext will soon replaced by multi-media and
hypermedia. When CD's, gigabytes, and speedy computers arrived
a few years ago, out went text-intensive educational software,
replaced by multimedia cartoons and dazzling CD's laced with movies.
By the early 1990s, it was possible to travel to France via CD
and learn conversational French by listening to and interacting
with real-time TV characters wrestling with landlords, engaging
in simulated telephone conversations, and fumbling through complex
problems reflecting life's real choices and blunders. Software
designers at M.I.T. introduced this magical world in 1993. Great
stuff... a wonderful way to learn a language. But the mere introduction
of multimedia, interactive TV spelled an immediate decline in
the use of text as a dominant communications channel in educational
software.
The same is happening with the Internet. A small California company
called Marimba told Wired Magazine in November 1996 that it was
releasing a software product called Castanet that would turn Web
browsers into the equivalent of interactive TV transmitters, thus
allowing computer applications, movies, TV segments, and the sort
of multimedia mix we now see on CD's to be delivered to a home
computer via the Internet. Marimba is a little company made up
of former 'core members' of the Java Development team at Sun Microsystems
(Freund, 122), and they are in a race with Microsoft to revolutionize
the Internet and leave the Web, as we now know it, in a digital
universe even less interesting than 'gopher' sites are to Web
users today. So much for my visions of a rebirth of text-based
literacy via hypertext.
The pattern is a familiar one. In the early days of microcomputers,
it was possible for reasonably clever people to sit at their computers
and design remarkably good text-intensive software at very little
cost. The first stage of the micro revolution was a cottage industry.
Apple Computer emerged from a cluttered garage. The world of publishing
was vastly expanded, and microcomputers delivered a refreshing
democracy of ideas largely via text-intensive applications and
tools. Even relatively non-technical people could compete in this
world. As an English teacher without a clue about computers, I
was able to teach myself programming and published a text-intensive
educational program called Super Scoop through a little company
called COMPress headquartered in a New Hampshire farm house.
A decade later I was still designing software, but the power and
speed of computers had increased so drastically that my new publishers
at Tom Snyder Productions vetoed a good deal of my art work and
handed it over to a professional team of illustrators who could
take advantage of th extraordinary new levels of resolution. Had
I launched the project two or three years later after my 1991
start-up, I would have used large segments of video in addition
to drawings, considerable blocks of sound in addition to text.
By the time my Classroom Newspaper Workshop was published in 1994,
the technology had changed so drastically that I would never have
been able to design this software largely on my own. It would
have been a team project entirely, with TV production crews, professional
animators, and Disney-like production values. Gone were the days
of my one-person cottage industry and perhaps never again will
I be able to call myself a software author. There is no such creature
any more in commercial software publishing. Gone, too, are many
of the small, inventive companies that produced these programs.
COMPress was swallowed by Queue, an industry giant which buys
software company lists but produces almost no new work. Tom Snyder
Productions was acquired by the Toronto Star publishing empire
and is now heavily involved in television. Small inventive, companies
at the cutting edge of new ideas are gobbled up at a dizzying
rate by industry giants.
The same pattern is occurring with the Internet. A simple technology
is giving way to complex programming and multiple forms of production
requiring teams of specialized people. These teams are expensive
which means large, well financed companies will eventually gain
control of increasingly larger and larger segments of the Internet.
But the critical factor is that once new technologies emerge,
old technologies inevitably fall away. Hypertext, the backbone
of the World Wide Web, is already obsolete, and the multimedia
tools replacing it will be dominated by teams from well-financed
production companies and software giants. The next generation
of Internet designers will be team members... script writers,
actors, animators, programmers, producers... all employees and
cogs in larger wheels.
Cottage industry democracy will have been replaced by marketplaces,
authors by committees, invention as the power of imagination by
invention as the power of producers to swing viable deals. The
end-game of this process will be interactive television, an Internet
delivered to TV screens dominated by visuals and sound with a
default standard similar to what has evolved in TV news: if you
don't have video, it's not news! Text-based interactively will
be part of the interplay, but not a major part.
Because all of these components are so expensive, there will be
many fewer experiments, fewer risks, less invention, much greater
emphasis on mass appeal, huge 'click-through rates,' and dazzling
ratings. Remarkable individual initiatives so frequently found
on today's Internet either will be swallowed up or tucked away
in obscure corners... back to the old days of obscure journals
and old-fashioned databases... gopherized in the dark twitchy
shadows of a new Internet glitz and razzle dazzle.
The future looks too much like the past for me to feel very optimistic.
Maybe we are already experiencing a golden age of media literacy,
a quick flicker of activity before Hollywood pumps the Net to
the bursting point with a new generation of flashy content...
my childhood nightmare arriving with mind-boggling special effects.
In the meantime, I'll close with a few excerpts from KidNews where
today's kids reveal a fun mix of savvy and innocence in the simple
world of text (parenthetical remarks mine). These are the multi-media
team members of the future, the next wave of Internet entrepreneurs.
Maybe they'll get it right; maybe things are better than they
look.
-- TV can rot your brain (On today's media)
By Lila, Grade 7, Jonas Clarke Middle School, Lexington, Massachusetts,
USA
Okay, here's the deal. Too many kids are sitting around watching
TV, or using it as a sense of entertainment.
Watching TV sometimes is fine, maybe when you're tired, or your
favorite show is on. But to just turn it on, sit down, and not
even care what is on is a waste. When I was little, I watched
the television all the time. But I learned from it! Then I took
what I saw and started doing things, such as save our earth bumperstickers,
or can drives.
Sure, sometimes I do just sit down in front of the TV, but it
is never because I am bored! Television can be great, but if you
use it the wrong way, it rots your brain.
-- Tired of being screamed at... (On justice)
My name is K. I am 10 years old and live in New Jersey. I hate
it when aides in our lunchroom stand there and scream at you.
I don't see why they can't just talk nicely and tell you to be
good. My teacher tells us not to talk in class and "Save it for
lunch time." When we go to lunch the aides tell us to be quiet.
So when can we talk?
-- Making Good Money Walking Dogs (On free enterprise and the child's wage)
Michael, Grade 5, Homeschool, Naperville, Illinois, USA
I make about $6 an hour by just walking other people's dogs. I
mean, come on,that's $2256 per year. Maybe kids should make a
dollar or two more, but that's still a lot of money.
--Why do Dogs Bark So Much? (On forgiveness)
By Alie, 6th Grade, Mary Peacock Elementary, Crescent City, California,
USA
My dog barks a LOT!! She barks at every person that walks by!!
It is so annoying! But I still love her even though she would
most likely bark at her own reflection!
--Kids' don't talk too much! (A reply to another message alleging that kids and especially
girls talk too much)
By Bizzy , Grade 9, Illinois, U.S.A.
Paul:
Excuse me, but number one: What do you mean by kids talk a lot?
Kids talk, but not too much! In fact, I love rumors! Every day,
I look forward to school because of all the rumors! Life would
not be worth living without gossip!
Second: Hello! I'm sorry but girls don't talk more than boys!
At least not in the school I go to! But I guess you'll learn that
when you get older.
--Mommy Saves Squirrel (Breaking news)
By Jana, Grade 1, Bruce Shulkey Elementary School, Fort Worth,
Texas, USA
Mommy came home and said I have a squirrel in the car. Daddy took
pictures. The squirrel was hit by a car. He woke up in Mommy's
car. He was ok. My brother Eric let him go in our back yard. The
squirrel let us pick him up. The End.
-- When You Were Little And I Was Big (On parenting)
By Krystal, Grade 5, J.V.Humphries School, Kaslo, British Columbia,
Canada
Mommy, I am going to tell you a story about when you were little
and I was big.
When you were little and I was big, I never got mad when you woke
me up early and wanted to get in bed with me.
When you were little and I was big, you picked all the yellow
daffodils in the front yard just for me.
When you were little and I was big I took you to work with me.
When you were little and I was big, I played doctor and dolls
and trucks with you all day long.
When you were little and I was big, I didn't take your gum away
when you unrolled all the toilet paper.
When you were little and I was big, we looked for a hippopotamus-
a Mommy hippopotamus, and a Daddy hippopotamus and a baby. We
never found a hippopotamus, not even one!
When you were little and I was big, you cried and cried when Daddy
had to go away. I hugged you tight.
When you were little and I was big, I put tree band-aids on Teddy
when he fell and hurt his knee.
When you were little and I was big, I always go on the big toilet
and you never fell in.
When you were little and I was big, I let you stay up late and
watch T.V. on Saturday night.
When you were little and I was big, Kanga and Slinkey and Tiger
and Frog all got in the bathtub with you every single night.
When you were little and I was big.
--A Mother's Voice (On life and death)
By Julia, 8th Grade, James Lick Middle School, San Francisco,
California, USA
I never knew much about her, not as much as a daughter should
know. Sure, I knew those big chunks like how many languages she
knew and her education, but those things aren't important, not
to me.
What I want to know is the sound of her voice. I remember her
telling me to lay on my stomach when it hurt, but I don't remember
the voice that said it.
I want to know how it feels to have a mother hug me. I feel guilty
about not remembering, and there is nothing I can do about it.
I knew how it felt ten years ago, but that is a long time ago,
especially if you are only thirteen-years-old.
I want to know how she acted. People try to tell me only the good
things, but I also want to know about the bad. They say I act
like her. I wouldn't know if I did.
I wish I could see what she looked like. I have a million photographs
of her, but those don't show every freckle, every line, every
eye lash.
Big chunks don't make a life. It's the little things that make
a person a human and a human an individual. Remember a person
when they are there and don't forget them when they are gone.
Me, my mother and my grandmother at Muir Woods in May of 1986,
less than a month before my mother's death on June 3rd, 1986.
She was 43. I was three.
Works Cited
Center for Media Education (CME). 'Web of Deception: Threats to
Children from Online Marketing.'
http://tap.epn.org/cme/cmwdecov.html (1996).
David, 'I Have a Face,' KidNews,
http://www.vsa.cape.com/~powens/Canadian.html (19 Dec. 1996).
D'Onofrio, Justin. 'A Room for Kids: Kids Report.' Netizen. URL:
http://www.netizen.com/netizen/96/25/kid2a.html (19 June 1996).
Freund, Jesse. 'Tuning in to Marimba.' Wired. November, 1996.
Katz, Jonathan. 'The Rights of Children in the Digital Age' HotWired.
http://www.hotwired.com/wired_online/4.07/kids/index.html
20 June, 1996
KidNews excerpts. KidNews. URL:
http://www.vsa.cape.com/~powens/Kidnews3.html (1995, 1996, 1997).
Kochenderfer, Rebecca. 'Fun Sites for Kids.' Edusource Web Reviews.
http://www.vsa.cape.com/~powens/newsletter.html (Aug./Sept. 1996).
© Peter Owens