The purposes of the Internet are many; commercial, recreational, informational, educational, communicational, relational. The Internet is a paradoxical universe of structure and anarchy: producing some good and some bad, some beautiful, and some ghastly. There are many, educationally relevant Internet resources, "by the year 2000, anyone in western civilization will be able to get the answer to any question that has an answer" according to influential Byte columnist, Jerry Pournelle. In the 1997 Current Population Survey by the US Census Bureau computer use was surveyed. The study showed that three quarters of the children in the USA have access to computers at home or school - significantly more at school than at home. Children most frequently used home computers for educational purposes (93.3%) and games (83%). One fifth of the children who have home computers used them to access the Internet. For adults, 18 and over, 92 million people used the computer at home or work. More than half these adults accessed the Internet from home, with 80% of them using the web to access government, business, health or educational information. Significant increases on the order of 5-15% were recorded for every category of questioning over the 5 years span between surveys. In all, one of five Americans (ages 3 and higher) used the Internet in 1997. This presentation/essay concerns controlling a kid's access to "morally undesirable" information. But before we can get to that, it is important to consider the need for such control, hi the schools of our nation, our children are using the Internet to reach out of the walls and experience the universe. Free ranging access to the wonders of science and humanity can be had through simply searching the Internet using search programs. Any teacher or student deserves these resources and they deserve to follow the curiosities that are a contingent element of human intelligence. The question that arises involves the various interests of the purveyors of these archives. Some of these interests are illegal and even more are morally undesirable.
展开▼
