Technology Futures

There is something strangely pleasureable about reading this article. PCWorld has compiled its list of what its editors think are the 25 worst tech products of all time. It's a bit like watching cable TV shows like "World's Worst Drivers." You know you should not take pleasure in other people's misfortune, but somehow, you just can't change the channel.

The other thing about this is list you kind of want to scan it to see if you ended buying or using any of these boat anchor products. My guess is that most people can find at least one item on the list that they purchased, thinking it would make life better and instead made it much worse.

South Carolina legislators have passed a bill that creates statewide franchising. What distresses me is that two distinct issues have been mixed up together in this legislation. Franchise fees have been lumped together with right of way. Franchise fees, as originally conceived, no longer make sense when content providers don't have to have a physical presence in the community. But communities do need to have control over their right of way and over those companies that still want to place cable in community right of way. The bill is bad law not so much because franchise fees have been eliminated but because communities have had their rights taken away (the right to manage their own common/public property).

The only solution, in my opinion, is for communities to get busy and build their own, open access broadband networks. Doing so eliminates the overbuilding in community right of way.

Dell is going to start installing Google software on its new computers. While this is yet another shot across the bow of Microsoft, the more interesting part of this to me is that Dell will get paid to do this. While Dell will doubtless market this as a convenience to customers, I'll bet a lot of them won't appreciate the effort. Corporate buyers of Dell equipment will likely tell the company not to bother.

Dell is doing this not because it thinks Google's spamware, er, software is essential software for customers. RAther, it's doing it because profit margins are razor thin and the company needs the payments from Google to stay out of the red.

This is just one of several stories I have seen recently about K12 students who have their own blogs and get censured by K12 school officials. Student blogs are now common, and school systems have failed to adapt to the new reality. It clearly unnerves some school administrators that students now have a public forum completely independent of the school system. In the old days, students with a bent for writing worked on the school paper, which was monitored by a faculty member.

But today, students have blogs on MySpace, Xanga, and hundreds of other blog services. To be fair, parents have not always kept up with the times either; students are often posting too much personal information on their blogs, making them vulnerable to stalkers, sex offenders, or just other kids with a grudge. But the problem the schools have is actually just a free speech issue. Kids are writing about their dissatisfaction with a teacher or administrator, and schools are overreacting by labeling such writing as "threats" and punishing the student by suspension or expulsion.

Often the writing seems relatively innocuous, as it does in the case I linked to above--a Chicago area student who felt harrassed about having a blog. The school system is now trying to expel him. However puerile the writing may be, school officials have little control over what students do outside of school hours. The tactic most schools seem to be using is to call the writing a "threat" to school safety, but in the absence of something specific, it is not a threat just to express one's dissatisfaction with school officials. These overreactions often end up as free speech lawsuits, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars, with the schools usually on the losing end. School administrators need to take a deep breath and think outside the box a little.

My suggestion: Integrate blogging into English and writing classes. Teach kids what is appropriate, teach them good blogging writing styles, and encourage kids to write using these new tools. How about your school system? Have they used blog tools to help teach writing?