There's a reason why parents who are internet savvy enough to know what a MySpace page or a Facebook profile is aren't interested in stopping their children from using social networking services like the above mentioned: it makes their children so much easier to track.
In the old days, hyper-protective parents in non-communicative families would have to sneak reads of their kid's diary if it existed. Now, in the age of social networks, they can see exactly who their kids are talking to, what each is saying, the pictures that they're putting up, what they're actually doing and so on. Stalking your kid has never been so easy.
So, how do parents preserve the tracking aspect (without letting on to their kids that they know about the internet) and make a half-hearted attempt at protecting them? Shout at someone who can shout at the service provider for them. That way, elaborate safety plans are enacted and parents can continue to read about what's really going on with their kids.
That was a nice rant and all, but it was so completely off base that I'm not sure where to start. The comparison to cars taking over for horse and buggy transportation is absurd at best and an idiotic thing to bring up in this context. Newspapers don't exist (aside from free papers dedicated to car sales and whatnot) as printed trading posts. They exist to deliver news. This isn't one mode of transportation evolving because of technology, this is having a source of revenue taken away which supports the real goal of the industry.
And what's this nonsense about "moving out of the market?" Most towns only have one newspaper, even in large cities like Nashville, and local papers are the ones that are hurt by online ad placement, not national scale papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post. Are you suggesting that these struggling newspapers just fold up and move elsewhere, leaving towns with no local newspaper at all? Subscriptions have NEVER been the only source of income. The economic model for print journalism is based off of two main tenants: subscription rates and advertising sales. With that, subscription rates tend to be a very low percentage of the revenue taken in with advertisements (both classifieds and businesses) being very high. There are typically online components, but because that economic model hasn't been firmly established, the advertising rates aren't nearly as dependable.
People read the local newspapers to find out about what's going on in their own community, and you can't just got to "any news site" to get that information. Keeping with the example of Nashville, if I wanted to read in-depth stories about things going on in my community there is no other option for in-depth stories than the Tennessean. Keep in mind that local TV news is a completely different monster and tends to offer very limited coverage in the form of minute and a half packages.
I may be a poor, ignorant neoluddite, but at least I can see more than three inches in front of my face.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a reason why parents who are internet savvy enough to know what a MySpace page or a Facebook profile is aren't interested in stopping their children from using social networking services like the above mentioned: it makes their children so much easier to track.
In the old days, hyper-protective parents in non-communicative families would have to sneak reads of their kid's diary if it existed. Now, in the age of social networks, they can see exactly who their kids are talking to, what each is saying, the pictures that they're putting up, what they're actually doing and so on. Stalking your kid has never been so easy.
So, how do parents preserve the tracking aspect (without letting on to their kids that they know about the internet) and make a half-hearted attempt at protecting them? Shout at someone who can shout at the service provider for them. That way, elaborate safety plans are enacted and parents can continue to read about what's really going on with their kids.
That was a nice rant and all, but it was so completely off base that I'm not sure where to start. The comparison to cars taking over for horse and buggy transportation is absurd at best and an idiotic thing to bring up in this context. Newspapers don't exist (aside from free papers dedicated to car sales and whatnot) as printed trading posts. They exist to deliver news. This isn't one mode of transportation evolving because of technology, this is having a source of revenue taken away which supports the real goal of the industry. And what's this nonsense about "moving out of the market?" Most towns only have one newspaper, even in large cities like Nashville, and local papers are the ones that are hurt by online ad placement, not national scale papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post. Are you suggesting that these struggling newspapers just fold up and move elsewhere, leaving towns with no local newspaper at all? Subscriptions have NEVER been the only source of income. The economic model for print journalism is based off of two main tenants: subscription rates and advertising sales. With that, subscription rates tend to be a very low percentage of the revenue taken in with advertisements (both classifieds and businesses) being very high. There are typically online components, but because that economic model hasn't been firmly established, the advertising rates aren't nearly as dependable. People read the local newspapers to find out about what's going on in their own community, and you can't just got to "any news site" to get that information. Keeping with the example of Nashville, if I wanted to read in-depth stories about things going on in my community there is no other option for in-depth stories than the Tennessean. Keep in mind that local TV news is a completely different monster and tends to offer very limited coverage in the form of minute and a half packages. I may be a poor, ignorant neoluddite, but at least I can see more than three inches in front of my face.