GenerationDigital

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[|Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet] by Kathryn Montgomery This book is about the issues related to having nearly the whole world at our fingertips as the digital generation. Instead of giving a boring overview or summary of each chapter, I will briefly touch on the important/interesting issues.

Montgomery best explains this book by saying:
 * "This book is not intended to be a compendium of new-media content and practices, and I cover certain topics in more detail than others. Nor have I written a "how-to" book for parents. Instead, I have tried to provide background and insight about his new digital-media culture, the forces that are shaping it, and the ways in which young people are involved with it"** Preface, pg xi.

Chapter 1 Highlights
Current digital innovations and the widespread use of the internet has allowed entrepreneurs to become very successful starting at very young ages, even elementary school. This was spurred in part by the Clinton Administration's 1993 [|Agenda for Action] which called for all schools and libraries to be connected to the internet by 2000.

Chapter 2 Highlights
Child-directed marketing started in the 1980s when the advertising industry created the name "tweens" describing those kids that are older than 9 but not yet teenagers. The press jumped on this name and started using it [way too much, imho]. The advertising industry knows that they don't need to plead with parents to buy things for their kids, they need the kids to do the legwork. In children under 18 were more than twice as likely to have the internet in their homes in 2000, than anyone over the age of 25. This led to an explosion of websites geared to children, including popular television networks like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon.

Brand loyalty became a large fight where everything from your desktop to your Barbies could be customized in whatever way you wanted (or they wanted).

Chapter 3 Highlights
"The image was haunting. A very young child sat at the computer keyboard, his face awash in the sickly green glow of the screen, his eyes and mouth wide open in a hypnotic gaze straight out of a horror film. Looking half-doll/half-human, the boy on the July 3, 1995, cover of //Time// appeared almost computer generated himself" (pg. 35).

Sexual predators and the harm that can come from the internet provides the biggest barrier to students using the available technologies in schools. From this issue of //Time// "civil libertarians and academics attacked the reporter and university researchers for allegedly shoddy work" (p. 35). The article raised undue cries of the ease of children being involved in improper activities while on the internet.

In June 1997 the Supreme Court ruled the Communications Decency Act (CDA - Clinton's law that would fine and jail those who knowingly transmitted sexually explicity content to minors) unconstitutional. The White House decided it was time to create something like the V-chip for the internet. These were software programs like cybersitter that parents could buy and install on their computers. Even today, these filtering programs do not work that well and block useful, informational sites in the name of protecting our children.

The internet blocking software programs became a politicized issue as well. The holders of the keys to the information on the internet controlled everything that subscribers saw, and even blocked a website called PeaceFire that tried to keep people from using internet filters (p. 60). The White House still moved forward with its plan to block parts of the internet. The National PTA and the NEA remained absent from the discussion because they wanted a broader focus on the issue than just child safety. They threatened to boycott a December meeting if a broader agenda was not met. In that December meeting, the White House Summit on Children and the Internet met and heated debates regarding reigning in an international monster flew, especially regarding the rating and subsequent blocking of internet sites.

A back-to-school campaign was scheduled and launched in September 1998. Anybody remember what happened a week earlier?

As columnist Lawrence Magid wrote:  "About a year ago, the President of the United States met with leaders of the online industry to ask them to come up with voluntary procedures to protect children from inappropriate material in cyberspace. Little did the President know that he would be the subject of what will undoubtedly become the Internet's most widely read X-rated document. That document was first posted Friday, September 11th on Congress's web site--the very body which, two years ago, passed a law that would have made criminals our of anyone who 'makes, transmits or otherwise makes available any comment, request, suggestions, proposal, image, or other communication which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent'" (p 65). "

Sadly, TV ratings did not "homogenize content" as was hoped for, but instead invited TV producers to push the envelope as much as possible.

Chapter 4 Highlights
KidsCom was launched in 1995, and billed as a "communications playground for kids age 4-15" and was endorsed for classroom use in school districts across the country (p. 67). Although it seemed like a harmless site, the owner of the site, SpectraCom, used it to mine information from kids about their marketing preferences and solicited "demographic, behavioral, and preference information from children. This is just the start of the devices companies use to get information from kids.

Chapter 5 Highlights
July 2005 - 87% of youth ages 12-17 go online! 84% own at least one personal digital device.

Chapter 6 Highlights
Schools and families no longer hold a monopoly on sex education. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 had a little something slipped in at the last minute: $50 million a year must be given to states to run abstinence-only sex education programs. So, we turned the control of educating our children about sex over to the prime time TV networks. Shows like //Dawson's Creek, The Gilmore Girls, Felicity, The Simpsons, All My Children, Any Day Now, Sunset Beach, ER, The West Wing, Popular, Will & Grace, Dateline NBC, That 70s Show,// and //Moesha// all took the responsibility to start talking about sex-related issues. MTV, still feeling high and mighty since its Rock the Vote campaign got into the sex ed arena as well. MTV teamed up with the Kaiser Family Foundation out of California and created TV and internet sex ed PSAs to help teach kids about safe sex, STDs, and HIV/AIDS. "In keeping iwth MTV's edgy, rebellious-youth image, the campaign encouraged its viewers to become engaged in sexual politics" (p 150).

Perhaps the best campaigns that come from the youth's reliance on TV and other digital venues relate to the anti-smoking truth ads that have been running for the past few years. As early as the 1960s antismoking advocates successfully petitioned the FCC to run free counteradvertising ads to combat the millions the tobacco industry pumped in to TV and magazines. The first commercial ran in 1988 and stated what some have called the "Tobacco War" (p. 157).

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Chapter 7 Highlights
Talks about political results of people growing up with easy access to the internet. [|Rock The Vote] started it all in 1990 when they tried to get young people to vote. It was started by the music industry because Tipper Gore was trying to put labels on music with "offensive" lyrics. After the 1998 DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) two websites cropped up that sought to fight the Music industry (whatacrappypresent.com and downhillbattle.org/itunes).

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This video is an example of "The Grey Album" a mash-up of The Beatles' 1968 "White Album" and Jay-z's 2003 "Black Album" which was a way for those who felt the music industry was out of control to "orchestrate collective actions against the music industry" (Montgomery 2007, p. 203).

Freeculture.org was started by followers of Lawrence Lessig, a law professor who fights for free culture and free ideas. [|Lessig had a huge groundswell] asking him to run for Congress in '08. Freeculture.org bills itself as a student organization. media type="custom" key="668895"