Monday
...or how to ensure your kids are more technologically literate than you.
One of the best ways to motivate someone is to present the person with a challenge. For children, forbidding something works equally well, if not better. So when I came across this product in one of those little catalogues that come with Sunday newspapers, I immediately realised its potential to do an amazing service in further advancing the technological awareness of the young generation.
Achieve total control over TV timeWorried about the hours your children spend watching TV or playing computer games? This remarkable new British invention hands back control to parents. Using the electronic Parent Key, you program the child's daily viewing allowances into Screenblock - say, 7-8 am and 5-7 pm. As the TV mains cable is routed via the locked compartment, Screenblock controls the power supply, turning it on and off at the times requested. But here's the best bit! It also comes with two electronic cards which act like a football ref's cards. Wave the yellow one at Screenblock and today's allowance is reduced by 15 mins - and red means the TV stays off until tomorrow. The all-important Parent Key also overrides all settings when the kids are in bed and it's time for grown-up viewing.
So far, so good. But if parents led by the desire to curb their children's TV-viewing habits succumb to the advertising and purchase such devices en masse, pretty soon many a technologically gifted whizkid will be popular, spots or no spots. Not only ways to disable the screenblock will be devised, but kids will be 'instructed' in how to do that themselves without their modifications being detected. Part of the solution will have to be the inability of parents to notice the 'adjustment'. Aren't you just grateful to the screenblock inventors for broadening your children's technological horizons?
No doubt the use of this device will be condemned by TCS as a violation of children's rights.
Posted by Paul Coulam at January 20, 2003 04:55 PM
Eeeeeewwwwwww......
Evidently this is only for use by libertarian parents who refuse to apply libertarian ideas in any context other than politics. Just as well really, after all, one wouldn't want to get rid of authoritarianism in one's personal life because...er, why?
Posted by Alan Forrester at January 20, 2003 06:49 PM
Posts like this concern me, and suggest that for many libertarianism is not just about lessening the role of the state, but about about the fight against any authority or constraints - moral, personal, parental. Alan puts this well, basically saying that a true libertarian doesn't just oppose state censorship, but parental authority to censor what their children view as well. Spooky stuff.
Posted by Peter Cuthbertson at January 20, 2003 07:15 PM
Er, did anybody notice the humour category?! I was just pointing out how human nature works around limitiations put on it, the children's issue is purely coincidental. Lighten up, guys! Have fun, fun, fun, just fun, no political commentary.
Posted by Gabriel at January 20, 2003 11:51 PM
"TCS" doesn't write collective emails as far as I know, but as someone who has spent a lot of time in the TCS-osphere, I would like to condemn this device, along with any other device used by parents to control children against their will, eg whips, padlocks, etc, along with any device used by any other people to control innocent humans, even including adults(!) against their wills, eg misuse of police powers, prisons, guns, etc.
For problem-solving with those we live in relationship with, I would recommend rational respectful means of communication (ie. being normal and nice).
Posted by Alice Bachini at January 21, 2003 12:49 AM
Respectfully, to refer to the 'children's issue' as 'purely coincidental' diminishes the importance of recognizing that the censorship involved with this device is another horrendous precedent.
I fully expect to young people to find ways around this, as you suggested. I also fully expect this company or others to come up with stronger measures. Perhaps an optical reader to turn on the TV, perhaps a thumbprint. How far are we going to go?
At what point does this become such a ridiculous war to protect the morality of young people that the government decides to step in with 'appropiate legislation.' Perhaps no person under 18 should be allowed to watch the news as it may be disturbing. Perhaps, as censorship becomes more prevalent, the government would advocate jailing parents that dare to tell their child that guns have purposes other than murder as it might turn them into remorseless mass murderers to merely here anything but the political fact.
Humor section? I respectfully disagree, this the very heart of libertarianism.
Posted by Kendall at January 21, 2003 02:24 AM
Respectfully, to refer to the 'children's issue' as 'purely coincidental' diminishes the importance of recognizing that the censorship involved with this device is another horrendous precedent.
Oh, pleease, what censorship?! It's is a product produced within the free supply and demand, it can be purchased freely by anyone. Perhaps a child could use it to restrict his/her parents TV addiction and get them pay more attention to him/herself!
Censorship is when you cannot say anything, write anything without the danger to yourself or your dear ones. The screenblock is firmly in the humour category, together with singing fishes and other nifty products of capitalism and prosperity.
Using the word 'horrendous' is inflation of such words. I'd save them for true tyranny and oppression. Get things in perspective, I say. No wonder, libertarians are so unpopular!
Posted by Gabriel at January 21, 2003 09:40 AM
I would prefer that Alan managed to apply libertarian ideas in the area of foreign policy or is it a gross violation to insist the kids turn the TV off if they live in the West but perfectly OK to have thousands of tons of high explosives dropped on them by the military if they live in Iraq?
Posted by Paul Coulam at January 21, 2003 09:43 AM
Thank you, Paul. My sentiments precisely.
Alice: I do agree with your point, too. However, that wasn't the motivating behind the post. In a roundabout way I was complimenting children's creativity and the futility of trying to impose 'controls' on them. They don't work, if the basis for the relationship with adults is flawed.
Posted by Gabriel at January 21, 2003 09:49 AM
What I still don't see answered is what libertarianism has to do with parental censorship anyway. Surely the libertarian perspective is that it is entirely up to the parents, with politics and the state rightly having no impact on the matter?
Posted by Peter Cuthbertson at January 21, 2003 11:02 AM
Peter Cuthbertson: But Gabriel's post was not about:
<grave voice>
'Libertarianism and children's issues'
</grave voice>
No, it was just a comment about the essential utilitarian daftness of this technological approach to 'managing' one's children.
Posted by Perry de Havilland at January 21, 2003 12:40 PM
Okay, but I was more interested in what Alan Forrestor was saying: basically that someone who opposes the government banning Bloodsplattered Anal Rape 5 is not a true libertarian if they ban their kids from watching it. I can't understand why anyone who understands libertarianism can believe that.
Posted by Peter Cuthbertson at January 21, 2003 01:36 PM
How could parental censorship and libertarianism not be related? Is it really possible for people to believe in and promote freedom, and then not see the implications of freedom for the members of their household, regardless of age?
Posted by lars at January 21, 2003 03:06 PM
