According to the Associated Press, the Web site of WikiLeaks, the organization that just released yet another batch of sensitive U.S. State Department documents, appears to have lost or left its
main Web host, Amazon.com. The main Web site and a sub-site devoted to the diplomatic documents were unavailable from the U.S. and Europe on Wednesday, as Amazon servers refused to acknowledge
requests for data.
Who knew that Amazon was even in the server business? Their vast shopping site has not blinked from the usual pre-holiday buying onslaught, and one has to assume that
something more nefarious is afoot here. Quiet call from someone high up at the NSA to someone high up at Amazon? Kinda provides a whole new dimension to the net neutrality debate. Geez, if it is OK
for the government, why not for Comcast? Also goes to show how the flip of a switch can do what the Fed couldn't do to printing presses in the Pentagon Papers and earlier WikiLeaks.
I tried to
engage my kids in a conversation on whether the leaks were morally justified -- but given their relative youth, they got hung up on the national security breach and couldn't fathom concepts like
others hating this country or trying to end what some might see as an unjust or unwinnable war. Their idealism is refreshing -- even if it stymied what was shaping up as a very cool dinner debate.
It is interesting to me that in a world where information and thousands of points of view are more accessible than at any time in history, teenagers -- who have utterly forsaken newspapers and by and
large network or cable news -- can't find the time or inclination to be better informed. This is not to suggest that more information would change their opinions on the WikiLeaks debate, but too often
I encounter a startling acceptance of things at face value -- or worse yet, colored by urban myths and crap passed along by their friends via social media. It is dumb sending to dumber.
Whenever I meet with teachers, I constantly suggest exercises that would force kids to read newspapers. I get all the right answers, but never any real action. I post news clips on the doors of my own
kids' bedrooms and bathrooms, but only occasionally are they noticed, much less read. I am at the point of asking artists to start writing songs about current events (thank you Crosby, Stills, Nash &
Young, back in the day). Songs they seem to be able to memorize by the score. Has anyone written one about quadratic equations? Send me a link.
We rationalize giving our kids laptops and
smartphones because they can be the set of 26 volumes of the encyclopedia that no longer gather dust in each and every middle-class home. Yet these tools are mostly deployed for signing into Facebook
and/or IMing or texting nonstop. And not about whether the WikiLeaks were morally defensible, but rather who is making out with whom, along with pointing to videos of stupid human tricks.
There
is an endless debate about the value technology brings to kids and teens. As far as I'm concerned, if playing "Call of Duty" for hours on end produces drone pilots for the Air Force of the future,
then so be it. But the jury is still out on whether holding a cell phone to your ear for hours at a time is beaming cancerous elements into your brain -- or if using iPads produces more dexterous kids
or helps minds more rapidly acclimate to a world that will be technology 24/7. Both sides can make convincing arguments. But try to tell your 10-year-old why he is the only kid in his class without a
cell phone or an Xbox, and see where you end up.
I am sure our parents thought TV would turn all of our minds to sludge, so I'm not really all that worried about the ramp-up of technology in my
kids' lives. But geez, I wish they'd wander onto the Web site of The New York Times. If only once in a while.