Watched!

Hilarious!  I've noticed over the last couple of years, when I send out a single email, occasionally it will read "1 of 2, 2 of 2 sent..."  Well, I only sent one email.  I look in my sent email folder, and sure enough, there is record of only one email.  My assumption is my mail program is set up to send copies of anything suspicious to the censors.


I just sent out an email on how to make biz in int'l trade to an org of online educators.  This time 3 copies went out (or my original and 2 copies.)  That must be particularly alarming!  A relative of mine explained what is going on.  Y'all can look up Admiral Poindexter and "Total information Awareness" and get an idea, the man is gone for what he tried to do, but his work goes on.  We are being subject to total information awareness.


With all of the people, hardware and software USA govt has dedicated to watching the web, they better be reading every email, viewing every website, copying every blog, or I want a refund!  Look at USA airport security measures, and you get a sense of what's going on with monitoring the web.  Social websites are self-reporting, self-criticism sites. Some day social networking will be mandatory.  Everything everybody needs to know about you will be available on the iPhone.  (If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.)  It makes me ill seeing USA run to slavery.

Let me make a contrast:  China very much censors the web, but USA does not.   In USA the gummint once knew you subscribed to the NYTimes but did not know what articles you read, or what you thought about what you did read.  Today, they know exactly what you read, and since you blog or email about it, they know what you think.  In China, since one is censored, the powers that be really do not know what you think.  Which is worse?  In China you can find information on African development on the web, but no links to the Tea Party (or Falun Gong).  In USA you can find both, but your time spent raging with the tea party over politicians' perfidy is time ignoring African development (and the tea party has already been co-opted anyway...)  Which is better?

Of course, that is a false dilemma.  We have options.  What we have today was the bastard child of a defense department initiative and monopoly theory.  The WWW is the child of big war and big biz, so the offspring genetically is a mighty wicked thing.  Like abandoned missile silos, some of us can use them for good things, but overall it is a net deficit.

At heart the discussion of the web is always reduced to considerations of national defense and commerce security.  The structure we have today presumes those imperatives, not what Berner-Lee envisioned.

What to do about it?  I am not sure.  Sufficient is the evil of the day.    Do what you can do.  

For my part, I have set up a means for anyone in the world to teach everywhere in the world, and keep the course revenue for themselves.  This is strictly noncredit, no grades, learning for learning sake courses, along the lines of what is offered at khanacademy.org.  What Khan is doing is wonderful and good, but students still need the "sage-on-the-stage."

If anyone on this list would like to offer courses online, paid only enrollment tuition but all of the the enrollment tuition, have the course promoted to prospective students in USA and around the world, then please join me in the latest iteration of what I started some 12 years ago, www.SeattleTeachersCollege.NET.  You would be a self-employed teacher, we would merely promote your course.  If you know of anyone who wishes to teach online with us, we'd be happy to hear from them.  

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