parent . thesis

Tech has changed our lives in so many ways. Two areas that interest me are our thoughts about knowledge itself, and our experience of solitude.

I used to like the game show Jeopardy and even tried out for it. I flew to Los Angeles for the day and passed the test when my daughter was five months old, proving to myself that my brain hadn't totally gone to mush. I didn't get called to be on the show, but the tryout was still a good experience.

But now, with Google and smart phones, we have all that information at our fingertips, so who cares whether we can memorize facts any more? The LA Times had a funny article about this, "The risk for Apple iPhone users: They know too much." Being a know-it-all quickly becomes annoying, especially when you cut into a good-natured bull session about what year a Springsteen album was released by looking it up on Wikipedia.

What about the experience of solitude? Mobile phones connect us like never before. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it made me realize that we are losing the experience of truly being on our own. The second story that got me thinking about these issues this week was The Wall Street Journal article, "Mom called and said, 'Slow down!'" I remember getting my driver's license and feeling the rush of freedom that I was on my own, alone. Now there are detailed monitoring systems that parents can install, including GPS, systems that will send parents text messages when their teen drivers speed, and multiple camera options for car interior and windshield view.

This potentially transforms the experience of being a new driver. I don't know yet how I feel about these systems. As much as I relished my independence as a teen, I was a bad driver initially and I am lucky that I didn't have a serous accident. Teen drivers definitely need to develop skill and earn trust. We want them to develop experience, while avoiding life-threatening situations. The WSJ article profiled a 16-year-old girl whose parents had nagged her to wear her seat belt, based on the DriveCam system's video evidence that she was not buckling up. Two weeks later, the girl rolled the car, totaling it, but she was only slightly injured because she was wearing her seat belt.

Teens need to earn trust, parents need to give responsibility. I believe that the teens should at least know they are being monitored. Such a system might be an angel on the shoulder, or a Big Brother nightmare, but either way, teens are not on their own they way they used to be.

Kidzui is a new web browser designed for kids ages 3 to 12 years old. Rather than operating from a filtering mindset, Kidzui is trying to build the internet for kids from the ground up. Content is reviewed by an editorial staff of teachers and parents, running 24/7 and adding new content each day.

The site launched yesterday and my 8-year-old beta tester had a great time exploring the Kidzui environment. The "stickiest" features of the site involved creating a "Zui" avatar, which collects points as kids browse and rate videos, photos and other content. There is also a social networking aspect to the site that I have also not had the chance to explore, since the site is brand new.

Kidzui is starting out by offering access to "over 500,000 websites, pictures and videos." That may not sound like a lot of territory compared to the entire internet, but as a parent it feels good to know that there is a browsable universe that is populated with content screened to be appropriate for kids. Without Kidzui, many young kids are allowed to visit a few sites but are not allowed to explore beyond them. Browsing on Kidzui feels a little bit like visiting a park contained by well-defined borders. If the park is run well, parents can relax a bit as they give their kids latitude to roam.

Web content on Kidzui is screened for basic appropriateness, but not necessarily educational quality. Kids rate the sites and the most popular rise to the top of the ranks. Among those are many very commercial sites, such as Nickelodeon, Polly Pocket, and Webkinz. I have not had a chance to thoroughly explore the parental customization options, but Kidzui says parents can customize the browser based on which topics and sites they deem appropriate for their families.

Kidzui itself operates on a paid subscription model, with a 30-day trial period leading into a $4.95 a month charter subscription, $9.99 a month regular subscription. This model makes sense to me, knowing that the site requires constant editorial updating, and Kidzui wants to keep the site itself ad-free.

If you have young kids who are ready for browsing--with training wheels--Kidzui is an interesting environment that can appeal to kids and parents alike.

The Kidzui browser

(Credit: Kidzui.com)

Every once in a while we say goodbye to a technology that has been replaced by a demonstrably superior successor, yet we still hold onto a bit of nostagia for the old way. One of those about to go extinct is Polariod instant film. Even though I hadn't used it for years, I was sad to hear on NPR's All Things Considered that the film is going out of production.

Digital photography is our efficient, truly instantaneous modern standard, but there was something magical about a Polaroid picture. Even if the final prints were not as good as standard film, Polaroid had its own mystique.

The whole process had a satisfying, ritualized nature to it. You composed the photo, clicked the shutter and heard that distinctive whirr. The seemingly blank film shot out. You'd fight to see who got to grab it, shake it (for no real reason--it just seemed like it needed to be shaken like a mercury thermometer), and watch as the image teasingly developed before your eyes. The film was expensive; about a dollar a shot if I remember correctly. You'd have to carefully parcel out the ten shots in a pack to make it last through a whole party.

A few artists had clung to the medium for their work. They are mourning the end of the Polaroid era, saying that for some applications, nothing compares to the look they could get from this film.

For me, it is strange to see something that I remember as cutting-edge technology as a kid become so thoroughly obsolete. So while digital photography may be superior in almost every way, let's say one final "click, whirr" farewell to Polariod.

Back when I was a neuroscientist, I participated in all sorts of "Women in Science and Technology" events and outreach programs. I have been thinking a lot lately about another kind of "woman in tech," namely those who are able create new jobs for themselves thanks to online connectivity and business tools.

This comes about in many ways. As a writer, for example, blogging has clearly revolutionized grassroots journalism. But beyond that, digital technologies have transformed all parts of the publishing world, creating new opportunities for product development, printing, distribution, and publicity outreach.

Sarah Headrick and Sarah Rivera

(Credit: Custom Made for Kids)

I got in touch with author/entrepreneurs Sarah Headrick and Sarah Rivera after coming across their site Custom Made for Kids, which has the quality design of a site you would expect from a large company, but operates from a Yahoo Store platform. I was taken by the concept and illustrations for their personalized children's storybook, The First Adventures of Incredible You, and decided to find out more about the partners behind this new venture, suspecting the the internet was the key ingredient powering every level of their startup company.

Headrick and Rivera confirm that this is the case:

Our daughter was rummaging through a box of memorabilia and found an evelope of photos taken in early 2001, about the time I'd purchased a cool new macro lens. One minute she was flipping through a series of cute puppy pictures and the next minute she's face to face with a set of full-frontal nude photographs depicting...a wolf spider. In fact, the spider was so exposed, the close-up so extreme, that Amy could not bring herself to even handle the photos so as to put them back into the envelope from which they came.

So when I got home I did the manly thing and, judging their scientific value to be near zero, tossed the spider pictures into the trash. When our daughter threw something away later that evening, and then needed to retrieve it, she shrieked again at the vile images that she could not unsee (and I was chastised for merely disposing of them instead of using our new commercial-grade shredder). Is there any possible way to prevent our children from accessing images or content that is disturbing to them or to us as parents? And should that be our sole criteria for judging whether or not we have won the war on porn?

A new Red Hat employee queried an internal e-mail list as to methods of protecting their children from accessing pornography, and through the responses I learned a few things I thought I'd share...

Perhaps the first question to answer is "what is to be protected?" We live in a media-saturated culture where some of the raciest material is to be found in all its pixelated glory of some of the most conservative TV programs (see Fox News Porn). Between the catalogs, newpaper ads, billboards, etc., there's plenty of disturbing material to go around. Indeed, when traveling through the airport with my daughter last year, she had quite a laugh when she came face-to-face with the image of a woman barely dressed on the cover of Cosmopolitan. (She called her "naked-bottom girl" for the rest of the day.) Deciding where to begin has become difficult indeed.

One popular approach is taken by OpenDNS. (Disclaimer: OpenDNS was funded by the former CEO of CNET.) The Domain Name Service (DNS) is the service that translates a URL (such as wikipedia.org) into an actual IP address (such as 208.80.152.2). By using OpenDNS instead of regular DNS, you give them permission to help you with the translation:

• wikipedia.org -> 208.80.152.2
• wikipedia.og -> 208.80.152.2 (it corrects your "spelling mistake")
• playboy.org -> BLOCKED! (if you want to filter out Web sites that serve "pornography" or "nudity")

But they also log every site you visit (part of the bargain of being between you and a "real" DNS server) and there is vigorous debate as to whether OpenDNS should be doing application-level rewrites of network-level requests. People think it is wrong (evil, even) that Google's toolbar does this. And they raised holy hell when VeriSign did this back in 2003. But if you are not bothered by the idea that whatever you type into your browser goes first to OpenDNS.com, and secondly, that when you request Site A, it could transparently and silently take you to Site B as if it were Site A, then it may be an interesting solution. As with any service that collects and interprets such sensitive personal information as your browsing habits, I suggest you read their privacy policy carefully. And you should be aware that OpenDNS is not open source.

If you want a content filtering solution that is open source (because you want to independently verify what is being logged, and you want to independently verify how the blocking choices are being made), you might be interested in DansGuardian. They have an impressive list of users as well as a blacklist you can review, adopt, or ignore. Several of my colleagues said that they use DansGuardian and that it works well.

An even more interesting suggestion was to use a firewall to force all Internet access through a proxy that can log every connection from every client computer. One family reported:

The proxy doesn't have a filter on it, but it does mail my wife and I a daily summary of what each computer asked for and when, so we know what the kids are doing online. And we make sure the kids know that we know.

I must admit that at first I was taken aback by the idea of having this type of access to somebody else's surfing history. But then I asked myself: if I am at all bothered by the idea of parents having such access to their children's surfing habits, how happy am I to be trusting that data with some third party, their supercomputer, and who knows what federal agencies?

Back to the topic of open source. One parent raised the issue that they are quite confident of the security and configuration of their own computer network, but what about the neighbor with the open wireless access point? A little education goes a long way. First, if you see a neighbor has an open wireless connection, suggest that they may wish to close it, as it represents a security problem for you. Second, if they are concerned about being a gateway to inappropriate content, suggest a mechanism whereby they, too, can play a role in filtering the content. OpenDNS might not be the right solution if your neighbor does not agree with their business model, but DansGuardian could be a good alternative. Third, use this as a positive opportunity to discuss with your children the "rules of the road" of Internet use. Those rules could range from accepting real-time oversight (how we do things at our house) to requesting specific permission to access the Internet (the parent turns on the sole wireless router the child's computer is configured to access) to accepting arbitrary monitoring and reporting. Or, do none of the above and study hard for what you plan to do when your child inevitably does access something you find disturbing and inappropriate, not to mention the disturbing and inappropriate things that porn-serving companies like to do to your computers. Worse than spiders, for sure.

I have always enjoyed and admired David Pogue's tech journalism at The New York Times, but I was disturbed by his recent piece "How Dangerous Is the Internet for Children?" which I believe dangerously minimizes the seriousness of the challenges that online life poses for families.

Pogue sets out to write a corrective narrative to what he perceives as a media-overhyped fear of online pedophiles luring children out of their homes, but in the process he discounts other reasonable concerns. The resulting commentary overreacts to the overreactions.

He talks about a mother becoming "hysterical when her 8-year-old stumbled onto a pornographic photo," and reassures us that his 7-year-old was not harmed by accidentally finding doctored "naked" photos of the animated characters The Incredibles.

"Naked pictures" covers a lot of ground, from a National Geographic photo to hard-core pornography. The type of image, extent of exposure, and intent are all relevant in deciding how harmful the experience has been. Pogue's example is not necessarily typical. As I have reported previously, I have spoken to several families whose young sons have been shown explicit, violent pornography by their 8-year-old peers. This was an incredibly upsetting experience for everyone involved.

Additionally, molesters use pornography and exposure to sexuality in many forms, including explicit online conversations, to desensitize and groom their victims.

Science teachers everywhere have had always had to face the question, "Dr. T., when are we going to use this?" In pop culture, it has always seemed to me that the general public is science-phobic, unless they are shopping for beauty products. Then it's "bring on the polypeptides," no matter how dubious the product's claims are.

But a new discovery has promise to deliver a genuine benefit, and brings nanotechnology into real life. Last week's edition of NPR's Science Friday explained that geckos use nanotubes to stick to glass surfaces. Now researchers have "designed a surface with similar structures to create a sticky, strong, biodegradable surgical adhesive bandage that could be used in a variety of medical applications."

Nanotechnology has always been inscrutable to me, requiring too much abstract explanation to make a lasting impression on my long-term memory. This engaging story finally made nanotechnology seem like something that the general public should know about. It highlighted the fact that the everyday phenomenon of geckos sticking to glass actually involves an elegant mechanism that relies on nanoscale pillars, Van der Waals forces and capillary action--something many of us learned about in chemistry and promptly forgot about as soon as the test was over.

The Science Friday interview is fascinating, and a New Scientist article provides more technical details for those who are interested in learning more.

Ask GamerDad column on WhatTheyPlay.com

Video games have been around long enough now that we can see a new trend developing--gamer parents. These parents have been playing games themselves for years, and look forward to playing games with their kids as a way to spend time together as a family.

The new "Ask GamerDad" column on the video game guide side What They Play brings this perspective to video game reviews and advice. Whether or not you are a gamer parent yourself, this point of view can be another useful resource when considering games for your kids.

In this week's column, "Gamer Dad" Andrew Bub talks about video games as fitness tools, drawing on his own experience of losing 30 pounds over four years by playing Dance Dance Revolution every day. This activity more than just "play" for Bub, as he relied on this weight loss to help him survive a heart attack at age 36.

The fitness options are expanding with family-oriented games such as Wii Sports and Wii Fit, which has been a big hit in Japan will be released in the United States in mid-May. I believe that a virtual sport should never replace 'real-world' family interactions. Even so, parents who are not major gamers themselves may embrace some of these new activities as a wholesome, and possibly healthy, opportunity to play with their kids.

Adults are increasingly aware of the risks of identity theft, but how many of us think about protecting our children's identities? This is an issue that we should be thinking about from birth, when baby registries, online birth announcements, and even the "Stork News" sign in the front yard expose kids' personal information--name gender, date of birth, and home address--to the wider world.

Children who get their identities stolen may not know for years, until they grow up and go to apply for a job, student loan, or credit card themselves. You can imagine what a mess that would be. It is important to periodically monitor our kids' credit reports to make sure there is not any strange activity going on.

The South Carolina Now website has a good article on this topic, with links to many resources.

One of the experts in the article points out that parents often use their child's identity because of their own bad credit. Strangers pilfer identifying information through mail, trash, and poorly secured forms (say, at a school or doctor's office).

Some basic precautions start with the idea of paying attention, investigating unusual occurrences such as a young child receiving loan or credit card offers in the mail, and building in precautions like investing in a home office shredder.

Everybody should review their credit reports with the three major credit bureaus, which you can do free once year.

We need to watch what others are saying about us online, and what information we are giving out. Many websites, even legitimate ones, are not in compliance with COPPA, the law that requires verifiable parental consent to collect personal information from kids under age 13. I am researching this topic in greater depth for a separate post, but in the meantime, it makes sense for us require our kids to ask permission before registering for any web site. If you feel uncomfortable sharing the information, don't. The extent of data mining, and how that information is used, is not fully known yet.

Identity theft creates yet another issue for parents to add to their list of important tasks, but this is definitely a case where an ounce of prevention is well worth the effort.