Taking the internet seriously
On Friday, Thomas Friedman sent in another column from Singapore. The column begins with the words “Singapore is a country that takes the Internet seriously,” and ends with “…American parents had better understand that the people who are eating their kids' lunch in math are not resting on their laurels.”
In between, Friedman writes about math and science education in Singapore, and specifically an online math teaching program called HeyMath whose “library of animated online lessons, interactive activities and assessment modules” helps both teachers and students.
Friedman's The World Is Flat also focused on how the internet is changing the world, and had the same implicit message as his recent column from Singapore: America is falling farther and farther behind, in part because it doesn't take the internet seriously.
How would we take the internet seriously? We'd understand that the nondiscriminatory, layered model of internet communications has made enormous economic growth possible, and we'd do anything we could to stop bills like Barton-Dingell from becoming law. We'd celebrate the power and innovation unleashed by the internet rather than (or at least in addition to) condemning the spam and spyware that travel online. And we'd subsidize builders of broadband networks in exchange for agreements not to engage in higher-level packet meddling.
The internet takes us very seriously. It reflects the best (and, sometimes, worst) of humanity, and it keeps creating better and more interesting metainformation about society. Surely this should be a two-way street.
[Thanks to GreaterDemocracy blog]