Comments on: Web 3.0: A Locked Down, “Secured” Web 2.0?

By: Librarians Matter » Blog Archive » Sir Tim Berners-Lee gives a rare interview

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:42:42 +0000

[...] Tama Leaver identified three sensationalist anti-internet stories run in the Age newspaper recently,Web 3.0: A Locked Down, “Secured” Web 2.0?. He has often speculated that traditional media run anti-web stories deliberately to scare their [...]

By: Larvatus Prodeo

Larvatus Prodeo — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:08:37 +0000

Web 2.0 scary, Web 3.0 alert and alarmed…

……

By: Tama

Tama — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:36:10 +0000

Hi Tanya! You’re quite right about the K-12 education environment in Australia being largely locked down and filtered already. I was at a briefing session by ACMA and NetAlert about a year ago and I was staggered at the energy that was being put in to blocking access to large chunks of the web (and how paranoid people were that kids would ‘hack’ their way to the full web in schools even though they often didn’t face any such restrictions at home). I’m sure that the same minds are behind the idea of filtering and logging all communication by Australian kids!

It would even more of a shame, though, if the same sort of security and filtration mentality ended up being applied to the wider web as well (then, I guess, the state education departments would have less to block!),

Oh, and I realise that ‘animalistic’ is a quote in The Age, but as you say, choosing that expression for a headline certainly situates the tone of the piece pretty concretely as a negative portrayal of YouTube and online culture (even if, really, it’s an indictment of six misguided teenagers).

By: tanya

tanya — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:00:06 +0000

Hi Tama, I enjoy reading your blog. My research looks at young people’s uses of online networks in Australia. In response to your question I would have to say that Web 2.0 platforms are already locked down to many young people in Australia. I think you may be in Perth but in Queensland the Education Dept have long blocked students use of all web-based email, chat, popular social networking sites including MySpace, Bebo, Tagged and Facebook, content sharing networking sites like Flickr and YouTube and popular blogging sites such as LiveJournal and Blogger. Have you looked at the free software offered by the past Howard government as part of their NetAlert initiative? I don’t know how many households and libraries took up the free offer but the software has amazing capabilities. Like the ability to have all logged chat conversations posted to the administrator without the knowledge of the person chatting, key word blocks, category search blocks, all online networks and games blocked…I think articles like the Age one you have mentioned above don’t help. Almost all of the online “horror stories” involving young people that are in the Australian media are from the US. Also I don’t think the Age called it an “animalistic” attack -they were citing the US County Sherriff? But those words make good headlines.