Luxury items are actually a sign of a healthy economy - they mean there's a diversification of the workforce and money being put back into the economy. I'm not sure of exact figures, but I'm fairly certain a large chunk of all religious donations either ends up paying the salary of religious leaders(who then spend that money) or in helping the poor etc, which helps them function in the economy better.
Knowledge is not a golden ideal or an inherent good. After Robert Oppenheimer helped create the atom bomb, he famously remarked that science has known sin. Space exploration, in a similar fashion, had very direct ties to missile technology, which was primarily interesting to the US and USSR for the ability to launch large nuclear warheads thousands of miles in order to kill millions of people from far far away.
As for your comments on war and people, it's hard to reply to such sweeping generalizations. However, suffice to say war is frequently NOT necessary, and the amount of money to be spent on national defense is always up for debate. The consequences of spending too much are historicaly evident, the most recent example being the collapse of the USSR. I hope that no one would agree that we need to spend money to kill, but rather that we need to spend money in order to defend.
the contention is not that no one will be using DVD's, only that such technology would be obsolete. There is a market today for VHS tapes. However, VHS tapes are obsolete. As far as rural areas go, I would not be surprised to see a broadbrand program that mirrors rural electrification of yesteryear, as the information and opportunities offered by the internet rises in value much higher than cable tv.
As a college student currently working fundraising, however, I can tell you that that's not how it works with our company.
Basically, the company I work for makes contracts with different universities. The institution pays us a pre-arranged amount. I think there may be a sliding scale based upon how well we perform, but that's neither here nor there. If a prospect makes a pledge, we send them out a pledge card, which then is sent directly to the institution.
I see a lot of people in this discussion being proud of being jerks, and that makes me sad. It is the job of a fundraiser, at least where I work, to ask you for three(sometimes four) different amounts of money. That's all they're trying to do - everything else is gravy. All you have to do to get them not to call back is to either A) say no three times or B) say please put us on your do not call list.
Good thing the producers now know exactly what to do to make money. I mean, really, I realize that this kind of advice sounds good to the Slashdot crowd, but come on. Without delving into all of it, I'll take your summary:
Imagine this: A movie where stars are treated as skilled employees and paid roughly $200,000/year (hey, their careers aren't as long as some of ours--they deserve higher salaries for that), the writers are required to come up with original and innovative ideas to earn their pay, and the tickets are $5/seat, with affordable popcorn.
"Stars" as you seem to think exist do not exist. Actors work from job to job, bit part to bit part, for many different employers. Out of thousands, a few make it big. How are you going to give all actors a yearly salary?
I like original and innovative ideas as much as anybody else, but come on. People like seeing the same types of movies, and even seeing the same movie remade. That's why so many sequels were made this summer, and why movie makers stick to a certain formula depending upon the genre - the formula generally works(this summer's bad sequels nonewithstanding).
Today was my last day at a movie theater for a summer job, so about the popcorn - yeah, that's where my paycheck came from. Movie theaters make their money off concessions. The concession workers and ushers all make under 6 dollars an hour. If transportation is any measure, the GM doesn't have a huge salary, either. The theater is NOT trying to rip people off, and realizes that lower prices mean more sales. However, they are a for-profit operation, and so a small popcorn costs $3.50(Tip: Buy larger quantities and share - don't divy up money so everyone can have a small ___).
How come our country always goes heads over heels for ex-military men. Since George Washington, who had the founding fathers as his cabinet, there hasn't been a single decent one elected on the merit of military service - Grant? Ike?
"Absolute authority from the perspective of national defence?" Please. He led a NATO campaign bombing Yugoslavia. The US doesn't need soldiers, it needs people who understand why people hate the United States, and can take diplomatic and humanitarian tacts to ameliorate the situation.
There is one thing he has other dem candidates don't - he has not announced he's running. If he doesn't have the balls to take the plunge, why would you want him?
If the Dems want to win in 2004, they cannot and should not concede that the Republicans have authority on national defense. They should press the fight on every front, including an actual liberal domestic and foreign agenda(balance the deficit? I don't think that's what FDR did). This tirade, then, has only one natural conclusion. Kucinich for president! http://kucinich.us/
"...it took 3 and a half hours to tell one third of a 2 hour movie." What? Are you suggesting Peter Jackson could have compressed the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy(what, a thousand something pages altogether?) into one 2 hour movie? What LoTR did you see that was filled with hokey special effects? I think LOTR is generally agreed to be a near perfect blend of real stuff(the landscape of New Zealand, actors on horses) with computer stuff(gigantic statues, ruins, gigantic armies.)
You give examples of bad CGI movies, but ignore the good ones. What about Toy Story, and basically, everything else by Pixar?
It's easy to say, look at all this crap. The hard part is looking through the crap to find the genuinely good movies out there involving storytelling. And in some cases, so what? Was the story behind T3 compelling? No. Was it still awesome because of all the stuff blowing up and other CGI effects? Yes.
No. Perhaps in a true democracy, "mob rule." WE would be the government, but then you'd still need a government to implement the entire population's decisions. In any case, government is a catch-all term for the people elected to make decisions and the people who put those decisions into action, all the way from politicians to bureaucrats to police officers. Not everyone.
In your system, you'd be paying 10 cents a comic. However, as I think the guys at Megatokyo recently talked about, there are different ways of viewing a web comic. At first, you're getting into it, and reading all the back story. If they post 3 strips a week, and you're like, 3 years behind, you're looking at 45 bucks just to catch up. Then you're looking at 10 cents a day every time it updates. In your app, going back to look at old comics would be free, as you already paid for them. So, while I definitely see the up side of your system, I think you'd need some kind of bulk-archive rate to make it viable.
It's just coincidence! I read it on Slashdot - See!
Re:Yet another for the stack
on
Altered Carbon
·
· Score: 1
Eh.... Eh.... Harry Potter is no The Hobbit. I'll try to think of two reasons.
First reason. The Hobbit has as a backstory the incredibly amazing world of the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was basically creating the world of fantasy with those books. Harry Potter is blatantly exploiting the world of fantasy.
Second reason. The quality of writing, the plot, everything - The Hobbit outshines Harry Potter by far(at least the first one).
A few winters ago I finally caved in and read the first Harry Potter book. I have a little step-brother that was just in love with the things(and there was hype back then before the movies). And my personal conclusion on the first Harry Potter book? Total rip-off. Unoriginal. Been done. Which is to say, her work contains nothing new(actually, lots of old) as far as fantasy books go, and nothing superior in the field of children's literature. I'm all for increasing literacy, but it bothers me when I see adults praising Rowling as a literary giant.
The Puritans were English religious protestants. However, they mostly chose to move to continental Europe and later the Americas after the autocratic military regime they had set up was swept away by popular pressure(the Glorious Revolution). Their society wasn't formed on conscience and shared values, it was formed on strict Puritanism. New England was not a wilderness, but an already civilized place, left relativetly empty by the European diseases which had/would killed/kill ~90% of the native population of America.
The many, many, many many other US military invasions of the past 50 years(insignificant, perhaps, to US citizens, not so for residents of invaded countries) usually had a lot more to do with installing pro-US dictators, deposing leftward-leaning popularly elected governments. There are some exceptions. These involve either power/resource grabs(Iraq) or the policy of containing the Soviet Union(North Korea).
Too lazy to find links - Google will back me up on this one.
There never was a situation in the United States resembling what you described. At one point in time, before industrialization, the majority of farmers were self-sufficient, which is not to say subsistence. They grew crops for profit. This, of course, did not happen in the South, where the rich owned the plantations and the poor worked the plantations(continued past the Civil War in slightly different form, well into 20th century).
After industrialization, more and more people became workers, getting a pittance of an income while the "robber barons" got rich. Unionization, after decades of struggle, finally started seeing tangible results in the 20th century.
Income equality has not gotten closer this century. While the ultra rich may have spread out the riches among the rich a bit, the rich are still getting richer at a pace far faster than the poor - even comparing the 1980's to the 1990's, the difference is dramatic.
I find it sad that you think people must be poor. The goal of the redistribution of wealth is not to have total equality, as you seem to think, but to give everyone in a country a decent living. Working toward that goal will never be unproductive.
PS - The middle class has existed in the US as long as there's been a US.
This off-topic, didn't read the article, third grade grammer level, illogical, chest-beating rant crystallizes why most of the world believes America to be a land of arrogant jerks.
Super power does not mean power about normal power. The term super power was created as a level about the Great Powers - France, Germany, Russia, WWI era stuff. After the end of WWII and the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union at a whole new level, a new term was needed, hence, Super Power.
To say that peace protesters have no power is incredibly short-sighted. The Vietnam War is the most recent example. The British gave up on the US's revolutionary war partially due to a large peace movement at home. Many, many more examples of protesters changing public policy exist.
I should think that the opinion of the vast majority of the world(which is what the term "second superpower" assumes) is at least equal to all the planes, tanks, boats, and nukes the US has. Pen and sword, and all.
The Hitler regime was possessed of imposing military might, backed up by an advanced industrial complex that was working flat out and was a leader in various spheres, including weaponry. The Führer, who had come to power through democratic means, boasted of the superiority of his State and his model of society and did not conceal his intention to seek world control. Such was his power and arrogance, and so obvious was the fervour of his support, that he was able to cow most Western governments. In the face of their cowardice, he was able to flout international law, aided by the Western governments' approval of his ferocious antipathy to communism, whose adherents the Nazis accused of terrorism (vide the trials for the Reichstag fire).
So how does this compare with the regime of Saddam Hussein? The Iraqi dictator - whose army could not defeat Iran despite backing from the United States and Russia - is in no position to contemplate attacking anybody. Industrially, the country lacks the means even of defending itself, with an underfed population and half its territory subject to foreign-imposed no-fly zones. Indeed, Saddam for many months has resigned himself to ever-increasing humiliations as inspectors are allowed even to look under the carpets in his own home.
This looks very promising outside the tech industry, too. Time and again the media reports on errors in school textbooks - Prentice Hall being a main publisher of these books. With an electronic version, schools could purchase the book, then, as time goes on, print out the most current e-version in a course packet format. Instead of purchasing a whole new series of books, they only have to pay for the ink. This is a good thing.
Technology has been creating job shortages since the Industrial Revolution began over 200 years ago in Britain. New jobs are always created.
Malthus thought Britain was over-populated in 1798, when the population was around 9 million people. Today it's at nearer to 59 million people. The lesson: there's always more space for people than you think there is.
Also, more people = more consumers = more job opportunities. What you mean to say is that we have too many poor people, but the problem there is wealth distribution, not too many people.
I don't know how people make comments like "But there's literally no place left for us to go." The Earth is huge, and there's tons of vast empty space. Anarctica? Why not Kansas?
I don't own a gun. I doubt I will anytime soon. However, if I do buy one, I darn well want every member of my family and most of my friends to be able to use it. I also want to be able to take it to say, a range, and have someone demonstrate. Perhaps I've seen too many action movies, but I want to be able to pick up other people's guns and use them too, for good guy purposes.
This looks like a dangerous slippery slope. If it looked to accomplish anything, I would commend it still. However, as has been discussed, the country's saturation with guns demands measures that get to the source of gun violence. It's a bit late for measures like these.
Ahh... the good ol' days of Oregon Trail, horrible excuses for word processing software, and discovering that you could tell the Apple to do stuff without putting in a disc. Okay, enough memory lane. Here's my effort at putting down the article point by point.
Thesis: "A growing number of experts[the article names three] are recommending that young children not be allowed on computers for any reason at all."
Support 1: "computers stifle learning and creativity and may cause damage to both vision and posture"
Okay... vision and posture, granted. But then my parents told me when I was in elementary school not to read under the sheets with a flashlight because it'd be bad for my eyes, and I imagine that posture wasn't too good for my back either. To say, just because it may be bad doesn't mean it must be bad. The article presents no factual documented evidence as to how computers may stifle creativity.
Support 2: "Computers download information...They do not teach children to think."
The fallacy of this statement has been pointed out by many: computer does not equal internet. My own meaningless thoughts later.
Support 3: "The Internet offers electronic graffiti. The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic. The essence of thinking is mastering ideas."
Infants come to mind. It doesn't seem that parents first let their children master breathing, then eating, then maybe the color red. Since birth humans are immersed in information, and what is knowledge but linking these things together? Also, again, computer does not equal internet. And it seems a bit odd to me, but is thinking anything else but recognition of objects or ideas and the linking of these? Surely I don't have to master the concept of humanitarianism before I can think about "hey, maybe rich people could help the guys who are a bit down." I dunno.
Support 4: "the instant gratification involved in downloading information off the Internet - to which 94 per cent of America's public schools are now connected - 'discourages study, reflection, and observation'."
Study, reflection, observation? What the h-e-double hockeysticks? Are they really worried that third graders won't be reflecting on the story of Lincoln and the cherry tree? Education has ALWAYS been memorization of data. Making this process quicker and perhaps more entertaining is not a threat but should be embraced.
Quaker Boost: "But there are schools bucking the trend. The Calvert School in Baltimore is one such low-tech bastion. Calvert's students are required to write daily compositions. During a visit in the autumn of 1999, I was impressed by the level of literacy reflected in compositions by children as young as first grade. Headmaster Merrill Hall said computers are not introduced until the fifth grade, and parents of children in grades K-4 are even encouraged not to let their children use computers at home."
Somewhere along the line, use of computers was somehow determined to mean the dropping of writing. Again, this paper lacks any evidence that schools that do use computers in learning have low literacy, it simply insinuates this. Mere propoganda.
Zip-bang ending: "It's about acquiring knowledge and learning to think, in which case libraries, pens, and paper are the clear winner, hands down."
It has always been a tactic of someone without any good argument to make claims for the other side that the other side would not make. NO ONE has said, "Gee, no we've got these computers, let's start burning the books, and who needs to learn cursive after all?" This entire paper is an excercise in stupity, trying to pass the ideas of a few people as Great Truths as determined by The Enlightened.
Slashdot Mirror
What?
Luxury items are actually a sign of a healthy economy - they mean there's a diversification of the workforce and money being put back into the economy. I'm not sure of exact figures, but I'm fairly certain a large chunk of all religious donations either ends up paying the salary of religious leaders(who then spend that money) or in helping the poor etc, which helps them function in the economy better.
Knowledge is not a golden ideal or an inherent good. After Robert Oppenheimer helped create the atom bomb, he famously remarked that science has known sin. Space exploration, in a similar fashion, had very direct ties to missile technology, which was primarily interesting to the US and USSR for the ability to launch large nuclear warheads thousands of miles in order to kill millions of people from far far away.
As for your comments on war and people, it's hard to reply to such sweeping generalizations. However, suffice to say war is frequently NOT necessary, and the amount of money to be spent on national defense is always up for debate. The consequences of spending too much are historicaly evident, the most recent example being the collapse of the USSR. I hope that no one would agree that we need to spend money to kill, but rather that we need to spend money in order to defend.
the contention is not that no one will be using DVD's, only that such technology would be obsolete. There is a market today for VHS tapes. However, VHS tapes are obsolete. As far as rural areas go, I would not be surprised to see a broadbrand program that mirrors rural electrification of yesteryear, as the information and opportunities offered by the internet rises in value much higher than cable tv.
As a college student currently working fundraising, however, I can tell you that that's not how it works with our company.
Basically, the company I work for makes contracts with different universities. The institution pays us a pre-arranged amount. I think there may be a sliding scale based upon how well we perform, but that's neither here nor there. If a prospect makes a pledge, we send them out a pledge card, which then is sent directly to the institution.
I see a lot of people in this discussion being proud of being jerks, and that makes me sad. It is the job of a fundraiser, at least where I work, to ask you for three(sometimes four) different amounts of money. That's all they're trying to do - everything else is gravy. All you have to do to get them not to call back is to either A) say no three times or B) say please put us on your do not call list.
"Stars" as you seem to think exist do not exist. Actors work from job to job, bit part to bit part, for many different employers. Out of thousands, a few make it big. How are you going to give all actors a yearly salary?
I like original and innovative ideas as much as anybody else, but come on. People like seeing the same types of movies, and even seeing the same movie remade. That's why so many sequels were made this summer, and why movie makers stick to a certain formula depending upon the genre - the formula generally works(this summer's bad sequels nonewithstanding).
Today was my last day at a movie theater for a summer job, so about the popcorn - yeah, that's where my paycheck came from. Movie theaters make their money off concessions. The concession workers and ushers all make under 6 dollars an hour. If transportation is any measure, the GM doesn't have a huge salary, either. The theater is NOT trying to rip people off, and realizes that lower prices mean more sales. However, they are a for-profit operation, and so a small popcorn costs $3.50(Tip: Buy larger quantities and share - don't divy up money so everyone can have a small ___).
How come our country always goes heads over heels for ex-military men. Since George Washington, who had the founding fathers as his cabinet, there hasn't been a single decent one elected on the merit of military service - Grant? Ike?
"Absolute authority from the perspective of national defence?" Please. He led a NATO campaign bombing Yugoslavia. The US doesn't need soldiers, it needs people who understand why people hate the United States, and can take diplomatic and humanitarian tacts to ameliorate the situation.
There is one thing he has other dem candidates don't - he has not announced he's running. If he doesn't have the balls to take the plunge, why would you want him?
If the Dems want to win in 2004, they cannot and should not concede that the Republicans have authority on national defense. They should press the fight on every front, including an actual liberal domestic and foreign agenda(balance the deficit? I don't think that's what FDR did). This tirade, then, has only one natural conclusion. Kucinich for president! http://kucinich.us/
"...it took 3 and a half hours to tell one third of a 2 hour movie." What? Are you suggesting Peter Jackson could have compressed the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy(what, a thousand something pages altogether?) into one 2 hour movie? What LoTR did you see that was filled with hokey special effects? I think LOTR is generally agreed to be a near perfect blend of real stuff(the landscape of New Zealand, actors on horses) with computer stuff(gigantic statues, ruins, gigantic armies.)
You give examples of bad CGI movies, but ignore the good ones. What about Toy Story, and basically, everything else by Pixar?
It's easy to say, look at all this crap. The hard part is looking through the crap to find the genuinely good movies out there involving storytelling. And in some cases, so what? Was the story behind T3 compelling? No. Was it still awesome because of all the stuff blowing up and other CGI effects? Yes.
No. Perhaps in a true democracy, "mob rule." WE would be the government, but then you'd still need a government to implement the entire population's decisions. In any case, government is a catch-all term for the people elected to make decisions and the people who put those decisions into action, all the way from politicians to bureaucrats to police officers. Not everyone.
In your system, you'd be paying 10 cents a comic. However, as I think the guys at Megatokyo recently talked about, there are different ways of viewing a web comic. At first, you're getting into it, and reading all the back story. If they post 3 strips a week, and you're like, 3 years behind, you're looking at 45 bucks just to catch up. Then you're looking at 10 cents a day every time it updates. In your app, going back to look at old comics would be free, as you already paid for them. So, while I definitely see the up side of your system, I think you'd need some kind of bulk-archive rate to make it viable.
It's just coincidence! I read it on Slashdot -
See!
Eh....
Eh....
Harry Potter is no The Hobbit. I'll try to think of two reasons.
First reason. The Hobbit has as a backstory the incredibly amazing world of the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was basically creating the world of fantasy with those books. Harry Potter is blatantly exploiting the world of fantasy.
Second reason. The quality of writing, the plot, everything - The Hobbit outshines Harry Potter by far(at least the first one).
A few winters ago I finally caved in and read the first Harry Potter book. I have a little step-brother that was just in love with the things(and there was hype back then before the movies). And my personal conclusion on the first Harry Potter book? Total rip-off. Unoriginal. Been done. Which is to say, her work contains nothing new(actually, lots of old) as far as fantasy books go, and nothing superior in the field of children's literature. I'm all for increasing literacy, but it bothers me when I see adults praising Rowling as a literary giant.
The Puritans were English religious protestants. However, they mostly chose to move to continental Europe and later the Americas after the autocratic military regime they had set up was swept away by popular pressure(the Glorious Revolution). Their society wasn't formed on conscience and shared values, it was formed on strict Puritanism. New England was not a wilderness, but an already civilized place, left relativetly empty by the European diseases which had /would killed/kill ~90% of the native population of America.
The many, many, many many other US military invasions of the past 50 years(insignificant, perhaps, to US citizens, not so for residents of invaded countries) usually had a lot more to do with installing pro-US dictators, deposing leftward-leaning popularly elected governments. There are some exceptions. These involve either power/resource grabs(Iraq) or the policy of containing the Soviet Union(North Korea).
Too lazy to find links - Google will back me up on this one.
There never was a situation in the United States resembling what you described. At one point in time, before industrialization, the majority of farmers were self-sufficient, which is not to say subsistence. They grew crops for profit. This, of course, did not happen in the South, where the rich owned the plantations and the poor worked the plantations(continued past the Civil War in slightly different form, well into 20th century).
After industrialization, more and more people became workers, getting a pittance of an income while the "robber barons" got rich. Unionization, after decades of struggle, finally started seeing tangible results in the 20th century.
Income equality has not gotten closer this century. While the ultra rich may have spread out the riches among the rich a bit, the rich are still getting richer at a pace far faster than the poor - even comparing the 1980's to the 1990's, the difference is dramatic.
I find it sad that you think people must be poor. The goal of the redistribution of wealth is not to have total equality, as you seem to think, but to give everyone in a country a decent living. Working toward that goal will never be unproductive.
PS - The middle class has existed in the US as long as there's been a US.
This off-topic, didn't read the article, third grade grammer level, illogical, chest-beating rant crystallizes why most of the world believes America to be a land of arrogant jerks.
Super power does not mean power about normal power. The term super power was created as a level about the Great Powers - France, Germany, Russia, WWI era stuff. After the end of WWII and the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union at a whole new level, a new term was needed, hence, Super Power.
To say that peace protesters have no power is incredibly short-sighted. The Vietnam War is the most recent example. The British gave up on the US's revolutionary war partially due to a large peace movement at home. Many, many more examples of protesters changing public policy exist.
I should think that the opinion of the vast majority of the world(which is what the term "second superpower" assumes) is at least equal to all the planes, tanks, boats, and nukes the US has. Pen and sword, and all.
Here's a link, and here's an abridged copy:
The Hitler regime was possessed of imposing military might, backed up by an advanced industrial complex that was working flat out and was a leader in various spheres, including weaponry. The Führer, who had come to power through democratic means, boasted of the superiority of his State and his model of society and did not conceal his intention to seek world control. Such was his power and arrogance, and so obvious was the fervour of his support, that he was able to cow most Western governments. In the face of their cowardice, he was able to flout international law, aided by the Western governments' approval of his ferocious antipathy to communism, whose adherents the Nazis accused of terrorism (vide the trials for the Reichstag fire).
So how does this compare with the regime of Saddam Hussein? The Iraqi dictator - whose army could not defeat Iran despite backing from the United States and Russia - is in no position to contemplate attacking anybody. Industrially, the country lacks the means even of defending itself, with an underfed population and half its territory subject to foreign-imposed no-fly zones. Indeed, Saddam for many months has resigned himself to ever-increasing humiliations as inspectors are allowed even to look under the carpets in his own home.
This looks very promising outside the tech industry, too. Time and again the media reports on errors in school textbooks - Prentice Hall being a main publisher of these books. With an electronic version, schools could purchase the book, then, as time goes on, print out the most current e-version in a course packet format. Instead of purchasing a whole new series of books, they only have to pay for the ink. This is a good thing.
Doesn't anybody read history?
Technology has been creating job shortages since the Industrial Revolution began over 200 years ago in Britain. New jobs are always created.
Malthus thought Britain was over-populated in 1798, when the population was around 9 million people. Today it's at nearer to 59 million people. The lesson: there's always more space for people than you think there is.
Also, more people = more consumers = more job opportunities. What you mean to say is that we have too many poor people, but the problem there is wealth distribution, not too many people.
I don't know how people make comments like "But there's literally no place left for us to go." The Earth is huge, and there's tons of vast empty space. Anarctica? Why not Kansas?
Look:
I don't own a gun. I doubt I will anytime soon. However, if I do buy one, I darn well want every member of my family and most of my friends to be able to use it. I also want to be able to take it to say, a range, and have someone demonstrate. Perhaps I've seen too many action movies, but I want to be able to pick up other people's guns and use them too, for good guy purposes.
This looks like a dangerous slippery slope. If it looked to accomplish anything, I would commend it still. However, as has been discussed, the country's saturation with guns demands measures that get to the source of gun violence. It's a bit late for measures like these.
Ahh... the good ol' days of Oregon Trail, horrible excuses for word processing software, and discovering that you could tell the Apple to do stuff without putting in a disc. Okay, enough memory lane. Here's my effort at putting down the article point by point.
Thesis: "A growing number of experts[the article names three] are recommending that young children not be allowed on computers for any reason at all."
Support 1: "computers stifle learning and creativity and may cause damage to both vision and posture"
Okay... vision and posture, granted. But then my parents told me when I was in elementary school not to read under the sheets with a flashlight because it'd be bad for my eyes, and I imagine that posture wasn't too good for my back either. To say, just because it may be bad doesn't mean it must be bad. The article presents no factual documented evidence as to how computers may stifle creativity.
Support 2: "Computers download information...They do not teach children to think."
The fallacy of this statement has been pointed out by many: computer does not equal internet. My own meaningless thoughts later.
Support 3: "The Internet offers electronic graffiti. The idea that they should be swimming in a sea of information is idiotic. The essence of thinking is mastering ideas."
Infants come to mind. It doesn't seem that parents first let their children master breathing, then eating, then maybe the color red. Since birth humans are immersed in information, and what is knowledge but linking these things together? Also, again, computer does not equal internet. And it seems a bit odd to me, but is thinking anything else but recognition of objects or ideas and the linking of these? Surely I don't have to master the concept of humanitarianism before I can think about "hey, maybe rich people could help the guys who are a bit down." I dunno.
Support 4: "the instant gratification involved in downloading information off the Internet - to which 94 per cent of America's public schools are now connected - 'discourages study, reflection, and observation'."
Study, reflection, observation? What the h-e-double hockeysticks? Are they really worried that third graders won't be reflecting on the story of Lincoln and the cherry tree? Education has ALWAYS been memorization of data. Making this process quicker and perhaps more entertaining is not a threat but should be embraced.
Quaker Boost: "But there are schools bucking the trend. The Calvert School in Baltimore is one such low-tech bastion. Calvert's students are required to write daily compositions. During a visit in the autumn of 1999, I was impressed by the level of literacy reflected in compositions by children as young as first grade. Headmaster Merrill Hall said computers are not introduced until the fifth grade, and parents of children in grades K-4 are even encouraged not to let their children use computers at home."
Somewhere along the line, use of computers was somehow determined to mean the dropping of writing. Again, this paper lacks any evidence that schools that do use computers in learning have low literacy, it simply insinuates this. Mere propoganda.
Zip-bang ending: "It's about acquiring knowledge and learning to think, in which case libraries, pens, and paper are the clear winner, hands down."
It has always been a tactic of someone without any good argument to make claims for the other side that the other side would not make. NO ONE has said, "Gee, no we've got these computers, let's start burning the books, and who needs to learn cursive after all?" This entire paper is an excercise in stupity, trying to pass the ideas of a few people as Great Truths as determined by The Enlightened.