Stop Overboard Power Acts

A new bill is in the stages of becoming a law. Here are some hints about what it is. The acronym is SOPA, and it deals with the internet and censorship. No, it does not stand for “Stop Online Porn Act”. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are new bills that have been pressed largely by the entertainment industry in effort to censor the internet with strict regulation and harsh punishment for copyright infringement. When I hear that the government is actually allowing these proposals to be debated, I think “oh great, turns our George Orwell was right … only 28 years off”, but I quickly get encouraged by the vast number of people who were willing to take action and do what they could to keep these bills from passing. Reddit was the first to go on strike and their actions created a social EMP. Soon after, hundreds if not thousands of websites went dark out of protest.

The web started out as a way to connect people to information. Around the turn of the century, it really became a way to connect people. Now, it’s almost not even a connection, but rather a venue that hosts a community. I am so happy to hear about members of this community taking their social responsibility so seriously! Granted, every community appreciates a police force, but NO community likes a curfew under martial law with without due process. Granted, Hollywood is losing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars a year because of piracy, but a bill like this would create losses in the billions for internet companies. The bad FAR outweighs the good. The internet must be able to steer its own course. Censorship is a slippery slope and we must keep it out of our community.

Sources:

Fight For the Future

Cool and creative anti-SOPA blackout messages – Internet protest in action

Growing Technology: helpful and harmful

Seeing growth in technology is thrilling, but it has to be watched closely –I said “it”, referring to technology, but that wouldn’t be quite right because we more so need to watch ourselves. At the same time that technology makes possible the exchange of busy work for free time, it also has a nefarious side. I could spend this time talking about the evils of internet content, with pornography, stalkers, hackers, etc…. but I see the greatest threat that technology (particularly the internet) poses to modern society as its ability to pirate productivity, replacing it with idleness.

Charles Wheelan, in his book Naked Economics uses the term “human capital” to describe “the sum total of the skills embodied within an individual: education, intelligence, charisma, creativity, work experience, entrepreneurial vigor, even the ability to throw a baseball fast.” Just as a paint job makes a car more valuable, learning a new skill increases one’s “human capital”. With that in mind, I created a list that lays out sites that I have found emulate the best of what the internet has to offer. These are sites that help to increase “human capital” and exchange back idleness for productivity.
In contrast, there are types of websites that invest exorbitant amounts of money to find out how to keep you on their website longer, and more often. Don’t give in!
Technology can be an accelerator of good or poor behavior. It has advantages and disadvantages and it is our responsibility to treat it with respect and unleash only its positive aspects.

Positive websites:

• The Kahn Academy
watch tutorials on just about any subject academia has to offer

• Lynda.com
watch tutorials on how to use software, languages, etc

• Instructables
the “how-to” repository of the internet

• WolfRamAlpha
the best online calculator, and a great teacher of math and science topics

• Mint
a great, easy and FREE way to keep track of your money

• Wikipedia
Formally a joke of an encyclopedia for its “openness” but now the most accurate and comprehensive encyclopedia in the world, ever

• iFixIt
the do-it-yourself repair manual (a wiki)

• Open Course Ware
Started by MIT, take FREE MIT classes from anywhere on a variety of topics from Engineering to Management.

Sites that quickly suck any sort of productivity include (but not limited to):
• Gaming sites
• Video Sites
• RSS Feeds
• Social media/networking sites
• Pornography
• Shopping Sites