(Above: the good old days when comics were the threat du jour).
It was like stumbling on an oasis in a vast uncompromising desert.
... Son does indeed say “it’s a waste” and “stupid”, but then goes on to describe the “waste”: maintaining a copper network while putting in a new fibre network. Maintaining an old copper network is expensive, Son says. Copper networks more than 20 years old should be “taken away” and “100% replaced” with a new fibre network. Son’s comments about the need to remove copper were mentioned only in passing near the end of Wallace’s piece.
Happily there's no need to say fully clothed while visiting the pond. We encourage visitors to strip off, loll about or even plunge naked into the crisp, cool water, and frolic amongst the squawking loons, splashing about in a carefree way. Sure the water's inclined to be crisp going on cool, and a little muddy, but it doesn't compare to the muddied waters of The Australian, and it takes the heat out of the shrieking fears ...
Most teenagers have been immersed in social networking since it started. Having known nothing else, they are learning about relationships, trying to form their young identities, some harming their sense of self in this new online world.
If adults want to use these sites, that is their own business. But when young children are doing so, it's up to the adults around them to try to teach them that social networking is not always so social. By all means celebrate the brilliance of people such as Zuckerberg. But at the same time, parenting just got a whole lot harder.
It was like stumbling on an oasis in a vast uncompromising desert.
Broadband network offers test of imagination, the column contended, and there it was, bright, shiny and gleaming in The Australian, having lost its way from its original home in author Ronald Monson's blog, wherein it appeared on October 4th, 2010 under the header The Magic of our NBN.
Good to see that the lizard Oz is only a month behind in picking up the musings of bloggers as a way of providing a bit of balance in its war on the NBN.
Naturally the kool aid drinking punters came out to diss the piece, despite care being taken by the author to mock the pink batts saga and so fit in with the house style. And naturally The Australian had to do some hearty pruning to make sure the piece matched the space available - after all, space is tight in the full to overflowing intertubes, and so this bit was lost:
Perhaps buoyed by the closeness of the last election and the partisan backing of The Australian, the Coalition seem to be banking on a repeat performance in waging a war on the NBN. Certainly of late this broadsheet seems unusually keen to provide a platform for the nay-sayer’s over-represented bleatings. The Australian has run upwards of fifty stories against the NBN since the August election. Authoritative headlines such as “We’ll pay dearly for this folly”, “NBN sums don’t add up” “Seven reasons why the NBN will fail” (surely one would have sufficed Malcolm?) have almost become daily fare.
This development could naturally just be a responsible news organization staging an illuminating national debate. A kind of public due diligence on a massive and potentially “dubious” expenditure of our hard-earned.
Alternatively, it could be a partisan player commencing a war of attrition on one of the key platforms of the party it has taken to supporting of late. A war that assumes special piquancy given the NBN’s shocking potential to reduce the influence of big, established news organisations, especially those unwilling or incapable of changing their business models.
Given the manifest benefits of a NBN to the nation, that alternative technologies are ruled out by the laws of physics and that, unlike virtually every other media outlet in the country, the ratio of articles is running at 10% for verses 90% against; the balance of probabilities suggests the latter. On this issue at least, The Coalition and The Australian are like two mating hawks inextricably entwined in a spectacular death-spiral.
Never mind, there's more flogging of mating hawks and dead horse metaphors on the blog, and so we turn to Crikey, and Bernard Keane, leading with Dump your copper network says Japan IT mogul - the story you weren't told.
This development could naturally just be a responsible news organization staging an illuminating national debate. A kind of public due diligence on a massive and potentially “dubious” expenditure of our hard-earned.
Alternatively, it could be a partisan player commencing a war of attrition on one of the key platforms of the party it has taken to supporting of late. A war that assumes special piquancy given the NBN’s shocking potential to reduce the influence of big, established news organisations, especially those unwilling or incapable of changing their business models.
Given the manifest benefits of a NBN to the nation, that alternative technologies are ruled out by the laws of physics and that, unlike virtually every other media outlet in the country, the ratio of articles is running at 10% for verses 90% against; the balance of probabilities suggests the latter. On this issue at least, The Coalition and The Australian are like two mating hawks inextricably entwined in a spectacular death-spiral.
Never mind, there's more flogging of mating hawks and dead horse metaphors on the blog, and so we turn to Crikey, and Bernard Keane, leading with Dump your copper network says Japan IT mogul - the story you weren't told.
It turns out someone bothered to fact check a bit of fear mongering by Rick Wallace given the header NBN a waste of money, says Japan IT mogul Masayoshi Son.
Uh huh, well to every thing there is a season, a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted, and of course every day there's a time to gather stones, and then there's time to hurl said stones at the NBN ... in the lizard Oz.
But really all this is just a preamble, an avoidance tactic for an extremely unpleasant task. You see, Janet Albrechtsen has taken it upon herself to scribble, belatedly and bemusingly, about social networking, in Social networking kids out of the safety zone.
Oh for the love of long suffering humanity, you shriek, do we have to?
Do we really have to sit through Albrechtsen rabbiting on in the usual fear mongering way about why no one's thinking of the children ... and so feeding into the wretched Conroy's hands as the master filterer ... for the sake of the children ...
Well hang on, because Albrechtsen has made an extraordinary discovery, a tad late but better late than never:
Some will start screaming about reactionary technological Neanderthals who just don't get what one pundit called the "early middle internet age". Sure, every generation of parents has its own concerns about new influences on a younger generation. Sure, often the fears are ill-founded. Rock music didn't corrupt kids in the 1950s. Feminism and the counterculture didn't wreck homes in the 60s. That said it's worth checking whether every social, cultural and technological advance is serving our children well.
Rock music and feminism and the counterculture given a clean bill of health? I almost fainted at the boggling notion, the extraordinary revelation. What next? Jazz age flappers and music and speakeasies and Weimar republic decadence caused World War two?
Yep, she's entirely missed the point, yet again.
Of course it was comics and television that ruined the minds of a younger generation in the 1950s - every commentariat pundit knows that - and any way having discovered that minds weren't ruined way back then, why not proceed full speed ahead anyway right now, and explain how minds are currently being, or will in the immediate future be totally ruined ... by social networking, the comic book of its day. (Ah yes, the social networking involved in sharing comic books that brought down many a fine young mind, and tossed them into the gutter for all eternity).
Springboarding off the movie The Social Network currently doing the rounds, Albrechtsen does over Zuckerberg with mind numbing predictability and familiarity. Talk about the bee hive mind of the chattering commentariat, fed a juicy pose by movie marketeers.
It used to be that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs served as the IT demon of the day, but these days Zuckerberg is the handy demon du jour. But just as in the case of wars, movies about IT are by definition out of date, just as the spate of movies about Vietnam came well after the bombs had stopped dropping ...
Strangely what Albrechtsen ascribes to Facebook sounds unnervingly like her own columns on the intertubes, or the war being conducted by The Australian against the NBN. A kind of vicious, unrelenting cyber bullying ... a fast paced, very public version of bullying, a world away from the old schoolyard variety.
Hang on, hang on. Was Albrechtsen ever bullied at school? Had the shit thumped out of her on a daily basis if a boy? Teased and mind fucked in a most cruel barnyard pecking order display if a girl?
Let's not undersell good old fashioned schoolyard bullying up against the new fangled intertubes kind.
Well to pad out her piece, and prove that she's down wit' it, Albrechtsen seeks fresh fields, and leaves the perils of Facebook and Zuckerberg to conjure up fresh unnerving dangers, in the shape of formspring.me, which shockingly and disturbingly asks people to ask questions and give answers ...
And then there's the perilous Tumblr, a slick kind of blogging. Tumblr, blogging!! Say no more, and don't even mention that it's the favourite of social pornographers, I see Caligula is standing by online, ready to turn his horse Incitatus into a consul or a priest ... or is that just another Tea Partier voting?
Hang on, hang on, blogging as an epic danger? But eek, The Australian has just published the thoughts of a blogger on the NBN ...
Now you can see why the wagons need to be formed in a circle against those dangerous internet nerds and their natively indigenous cunning and nerdish intertubes ways ...
The bright side to Tumblr being the demon du jour? Well it seems like 4chan must be dead, and so no need for alarmist stories like this News Corp story Jessi Slaughter and the 4chan trolls - the case for censoring the internet.
And whatever happened to chatroulette, with its wiki here? Well these days it starts with a poignant message:
Happily there's no need to say fully clothed while visiting the pond. We encourage visitors to strip off, loll about or even plunge naked into the crisp, cool water, and frolic amongst the squawking loons, splashing about in a carefree way. Sure the water's inclined to be crisp going on cool, and a little muddy, but it doesn't compare to the muddied waters of The Australian, and it takes the heat out of the shrieking fears ...
Because of course the point is to maintain the fear. Always the fear.
And so Albrechtsen rounds out her survey of the perils of the toxic cocktails on offer on the intertubes with a despairing cry for the children - won't someone think of them - and the parents - won't someone think of them as they think about the children:
If adults want to use these sites, that is their own business. But when young children are doing so, it's up to the adults around them to try to teach them that social networking is not always so social. By all means celebrate the brilliance of people such as Zuckerberg. But at the same time, parenting just got a whole lot harder.
There is of course only one solution.
We must all join in The Australian's campaign to destroy the NBN. It's the only way to save the children of the future, and make the job of parenting a whole lot easier.
If the NBN rolls out and destroys the current business model of Chairman Rupert, it goes without saying that western civilisation will be ruined, along with the children ...
(Below: beware the frumious bandersnatch, and instead be uplifted by A History of Christian Archie Comics, which shows the way forward for worried children and anxious nervous nellie parents alarmed by Janet Albrechtsen).
Your comment on chatroulette reminded me of this - http://www.27bslash6.com/chat.html
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