Interesting read

A quotation from "The Cult of the Amateur" by Andrew Keen - a book commenting on the interaction between our kids and the web:

"Which brings me to my final point: Parents must man the front lines in the battle to protect children from the evil lurking on the Web. In today's Web world, one thing is clear - kids are spending more and more time online. And while this may be unavoidable, if you're a parent, when, where, and how your kid spends his or her time online is largely up to you. Move their computer to a family room, rather than allowing them to go online in the privacy of their bedrooms.



This will help you monitor the amount of time spent at MySpace and other sites that can monopolize their time at the expense of homework, exercise , or interacting with friends in the real world.

We can control when our kids are allowed online, where we keep the family computer, and especially now, with all the various Internet safety products available, what sites they visit and what content they see. With products like Net Nanny, Cybersitter, and Smart Alex, for example, parents can program their child's Internet browser to block specific sites of images, restrict chat and instant messaging to a "safe list" of friends, limit time online, control downloads, and block private information like phone numbers and addresses from leaving the computer. And by downloading the free parental notification software that MySpace unveiled in January 2007, parents can track the name, age, and location their children use to identify themselves on their MySpace page."

- Andrew Keen, "The Cult of the Amateur" (How today's internet is killing our culture. 2007. Doubleday.)

This book (out for two years now) warns about the misinformation, false quotes and misleading images on the net and how our failure to police this information damages our culture and our understanding of ourselves and the world. The author writes on culture, media and technology for various publications.