[00:18.380 --> 00:18.980]  Welcome.
[00:20.880 --> 00:22.020]  Welcome, damn it!
[00:22.880 --> 00:23.480]  Hi!
[00:29.940 --> 00:34.470]  Stay closer to the mic, otherwise I can give you a wireless one instead.
[00:37.860 --> 00:39.500]  Would you like a wireless instead?
[00:41.260 --> 00:41.620]  Okay.
[00:43.760 --> 00:44.540]  My name is Greg Newby.
[00:44.720 --> 00:44.800]  Hi.
[00:46.400 --> 00:46.760]  Welcome.
[00:47.040 --> 00:48.180]  We're going to have a lot of fun here.
[00:48.840 --> 00:50.240]  We may or may not have fun in this session.
[00:50.280 --> 00:50.960]  I'll do my best.
[00:51.400 --> 00:57.440]  This is, as you know, the second slot in the presentation schedule for today.
[00:57.660 --> 00:59.860]  And we are running on time, which is nice.
[01:00.120 --> 01:03.000]  We don't quite have everything running at the conference, as you've noticed.
[01:03.180 --> 01:07.320]  The wireless on the team floor has been a little sketchy and I don't think it's working right now.
[01:07.340 --> 01:09.320]  We'll have that running by later on.
[01:09.480 --> 01:10.880]  So I hope you're having a good conference so far.
[01:10.900 --> 01:13.560]  And I hope that you have a fantastic weekend.
[01:16.000 --> 01:20.900]  I'd also like to ask at the beginning that people with cell phones shut them off or set them to vibrate.
[01:21.480 --> 01:24.780]  And if you need to take a phone call, you can step out back.
[01:25.260 --> 01:28.720]  It's the case that one person on a cell phone is not such a big deal.
[01:28.720 --> 01:37.000]  But during a talk, like the last talk, all of a sudden there are ten people that have calls and a big distraction to fellow conference attendees.
[01:38.200 --> 01:46.840]  Anyway, what I'd like to talk about is this idea that I have, sort of a proposal that I have for teaching what I'll call information ethics.
[01:46.840 --> 01:53.400]  But really, they're focused on what I'll introduce as a hacker ethic in curriculum.
[01:53.700 --> 02:00.920]  And I'll suggest, momentarily, that we do this for people in grade school, in high school, and college.
[02:00.920 --> 02:17.060]  As sort of a minimum, not something that is complete by any means, but sort of a minimum standard for what people really should know about things like data security, information privacy, secrecy, things like that.
[02:17.060 --> 02:29.920]  And my rationale for this is that the schools are doing a pretty good job, well, a questionable job, I suppose, but they're certainly at least working to train people to use computers.
[02:31.700 --> 02:41.500]  Most states now are having some sort of effort, if they don't already have something in place, to make sure that people who graduate from high school have a certain level of computer literacy.
[02:41.500 --> 02:44.720]  And that's happening at an earlier and earlier age.
[02:44.840 --> 02:53.220]  Certainly people in grade school are using computers, whether it's in the library, maybe not typing papers or something like that, but in the library or in the classroom.
[02:53.460 --> 02:55.860]  So we do have a lot of computer use going on.
[02:56.000 --> 03:12.900]  What I haven't seen in the curriculum plans that I've evaluated is really anything dealing with the ethical side, with what I was talking about, privacy, security, appropriate use of information, or even some of the basic concepts, the idea of value of information,
[03:13.140 --> 03:16.080]  adding value to information, things like that.
[03:16.340 --> 03:23.100]  So essentially my suggestion today, and I'll go through some details and some ideas as to how it might look at some point in the future.
[03:23.160 --> 03:36.420]  My suggestion today is to get that into the same classrooms where people are learning to use computers, to get it in there so that they're also learning about appropriate and ethical use of computers.
[03:37.460 --> 03:40.960]  Let me mention who I am, and then we'll actually give a little bit of the rationale.
[03:41.140 --> 03:44.520]  We'll go into the rationale and then work through some of what this might look like.
[03:44.740 --> 03:45.820]  My name is Greg Newby.
[03:45.900 --> 03:51.700]  I was actually a speaker at the HAL 2001 conference and the H2K conference a couple of years ago.
[03:52.000 --> 03:53.520]  I think in this very same room.
[03:53.640 --> 03:54.760]  I might have been the one next door.
[03:55.500 --> 04:07.380]  So I've been talking about this idea of sort of hacker ethics and information ethics and what people with computer skills could do to essentially make the world a better place, which I think is in most of our interest.
[04:07.680 --> 04:12.280]  There's certainly always the criminal element of hacking and stuff like that.
[04:12.500 --> 04:19.360]  But for the most part, the hackers that I know are ethical, caring, curious, and capable people.
[04:19.540 --> 04:30.120]  And I see part of my mission really is to try to channel that energy towards good things, towards things that we believe will achieve good.
[04:30.980 --> 04:32.400]  So I've been talking about this for a little while.
[04:32.600 --> 04:38.900]  I've been teaching things about the Internet since about 1988, which really, depending on how you count the Internet, sort of predates the Internet.
[04:39.020 --> 04:40.400]  We're talking about BITNET a lot in those days.
[04:40.660 --> 04:41.640]  So I've been doing this a lot.
[04:42.080 --> 04:43.080]  I do write a lot of code.
[04:43.200 --> 04:45.780]  I have a couple of grants to do some open source search engines.
[04:47.840 --> 04:52.480]  And so I have a pretty reasonable technical edge, I hope.
[04:53.860 --> 04:58.320]  Well, let's talk about what a curriculum is and why we might potentially want one.
[04:58.900 --> 05:02.780]  We are all engaged with curricula, which is a plural or a curriculum.
[05:03.120 --> 05:04.640]  This is basically just a plan of study.
[05:05.080 --> 05:07.660]  It could be for a whole entire college degree.
[05:07.900 --> 05:09.920]  It could be for a particular course.
[05:10.100 --> 05:16.500]  It could be for a, you know, a continuing education workshop, that type of thing.
[05:16.900 --> 05:22.360]  And in K-12 schools, we often have a... In New York State, you have the Board of Regents.
[05:22.360 --> 05:31.960]  But in K-12 schools, there's often like a governing agency at the school level, maybe at the school district level, and often at the city or state level.
[05:32.080 --> 05:34.040]  That kind of says, here's what you need to teach.
[05:34.160 --> 05:35.580]  You know, we want people to know how to read.
[05:35.700 --> 05:40.860]  We want people to know how to do math, you know, through algebra, through trigonometry or something like that.
[05:41.180 --> 05:49.320]  And as I mentioned before, we're really starting to see it in curricula for K-12 that computers are a part of that.
[05:49.320 --> 06:05.560]  In North Carolina, where I live now and where I teach at UNC, there is basically an exit requirement that says that people that graduate from high school in North Carolina have to have a pretty basic, you know, a set of computer skills.
[06:05.900 --> 06:12.960]  You know, the ability to use operating systems, word processing, spreadsheet use, a little bit of Internet, email, stuff like that.
[06:13.100 --> 06:19.560]  So not, you know, not by any means the type of things that people in this audience are going to know, but at least a level.
[06:20.180 --> 06:20.240]  Okay?
[06:20.540 --> 06:24.540]  And North Carolina has a fairly poor school system, nationally ranked.
[06:24.640 --> 06:27.820]  It's not a leading place for public schools.
[06:27.820 --> 06:34.400]  And yet they have this essentially fairly early and moderately forward-looking idea about computer literacy.
[06:35.540 --> 06:38.160]  So we have these curricula in place.
[06:38.160 --> 06:40.660]  And really what I'm suggesting is to add a little bit.
[06:40.660 --> 06:53.260]  And I think it's realistic in the way schools work and the way these computer literacy things happen, to expect a fairly small number of hours to be devoted to information ethics.
[06:53.560 --> 07:03.300]  So basically what I'm suggesting here, as kind of a minimum, is to say let's do a couple of modules for maybe a day or a few hours that will get people thinking about some of these larger issues.
[07:03.520 --> 07:05.260]  And as I said, do it early.
[07:05.420 --> 07:21.660]  If people are being taught to use computers in the fifth grade or the fourth grade or the sixth grade, then let's deliver them some basic knowledge about what they need to know beyond the computer as skill and get them into the conceptual space.
[07:25.620 --> 07:26.960]  So that's kind of the idea.
[07:27.200 --> 07:29.080]  Now, what's the idea of hacking?
[07:29.220 --> 07:30.560]  This is a hacking conference, right?
[07:30.860 --> 07:42.180]  Well, my opinion is that there's an awful lot of overlap between what you might consider to be information ethics and the hacker ethic, or what some of the shared hacker ethics are.
[07:42.460 --> 07:56.600]  And these have to do with the value of exploring systems, the value of questioning, the value of open information, but also understanding that sometimes there's privacy, sometimes there's security.
[07:56.860 --> 08:02.640]  And I think, by and large, hackers are, you know, pretty sophisticated in their thinking about these types of issues.
[08:02.900 --> 08:18.420]  And in fact, what I'll suggest in a moment is that by informing people and educating them about information ethics, I think actually we're going to be helping hackers because part of what we really want to encourage is what hackers already value.
[08:18.680 --> 08:28.320]  We'd like to encourage people to explore systems, to not trust systems without being able to understand them, and that type of thing.
[08:28.540 --> 08:31.420]  And that's what we, for the most part, probably believe.
[08:31.580 --> 08:42.660]  And I think that these are realistic values to deliver to people, not quite in the way I just described, but in a different sort of way with the same value.
[08:50.780 --> 09:00.780]  So, with the hackers being curious, motivated, talented, and so forth, we like curious, motivated, talented people.
[09:00.940 --> 09:04.160]  There should be more curious, motivated, talented people in the world, right?
[09:04.400 --> 09:05.160]  Of course right.
[09:05.940 --> 09:17.740]  And yet, we hear story after story, just got to pick up any issue of 2600 Magazine, of people that exhibited curiosity about computer systems, and if they were in a K-12 system, they maybe found themselves suspended.
[09:18.060 --> 09:22.400]  If they were in a store, if they were in a public place, maybe found themselves kicked out or even arrested.
[09:24.740 --> 09:34.700]  And this is a problem that can be partially addressed by encouraging the exploration, by encouraging the understanding.
[09:34.700 --> 09:40.020]  And I think that what we have going on right now, it'll take a little while yet, but we're going to have a shift.
[09:40.380 --> 09:52.260]  Because a lot of the people that right now are teaching computers, running schools, stuff like that, they don't have nearly the type of understanding of computer systems that people that are growing up with computers right now will have.
[09:52.260 --> 10:13.700]  So I'm optimistic for the future that when the people that are growing up and that have been growing up with computers as part of their everyday lives are, you know, school principals or running places, you know, law enforcement, etc., we're going to have a little more and hopefully a lot more of a valuing of really effective use and understanding of computer systems,
[10:13.900 --> 10:19.520]  not just, you know, following some list that you can accomplish some skill, accomplish some set.
[10:19.520 --> 10:20.940]  And that, of course, there's a role for that as well.
[10:21.100 --> 10:23.080]  But the curiosity, the exploration is valuable.
[10:23.260 --> 10:30.480]  And in fact, you know, I'll make the case for the hackers being a national asset there in the second point.
[10:31.020 --> 10:34.280]  Where have the innovations come from in computing?
[10:34.540 --> 10:40.860]  They've come from people with the hacker spirit, from people that are exploring systems, pushing the boundaries and so forth.
[10:41.040 --> 10:49.680]  If we squelch that spirit, we're risking the future of those innovations, innovations that haven't happened yet.
[10:50.480 --> 10:51.980]  So I feel really strongly about that.
[10:52.280 --> 10:52.600]  Yeah, go ahead.
[10:52.720 --> 10:54.280]  Quick question on the first point.
[10:54.540 --> 10:57.920]  Why does Mary the receptionist need to be curious about the network?
[10:58.060 --> 10:58.880]  Oh, she doesn't.
[10:58.980 --> 11:07.500]  Yeah, I tried to qualify that because I think there's still a role for people that don't care, don't need to know, not part of their job description, not part of their interests.
[11:07.960 --> 11:09.760]  Absolutely not saying that that doesn't exist.
[11:09.760 --> 11:12.760]  I mean, we care about computers for the most part, right?
[11:13.000 --> 11:15.640]  But I know that there's a lot of people that really don't care about computers.
[11:15.780 --> 11:16.800]  That's okay with me.
[11:17.080 --> 11:18.100]  Absolutely okay with me.
[11:18.820 --> 11:31.340]  But what I want to avoid is the opposite, which as I said, we hear about so often in the page 2600, which is people that don't want to follow the set of steps are suddenly finding themselves in trouble.
[11:32.220 --> 11:34.820]  So I think that's mostly a mindset thing.
[11:35.540 --> 11:49.880]  People that don't have a good computer skill or a good understanding of concepts that might be, say, running a school library, you know, in a K through 12 example, they're legitimately, I think, frightened or concerned when someone's doing something that they don't understand.
[11:51.080 --> 11:52.800]  And that'll change over time.
[11:53.080 --> 12:02.400]  And this curriculum might help to change things because I think the people that are delivering the curriculum will also start to question and think about the larger concepts.
[12:03.440 --> 12:05.700]  One of the things that happens when people use computers...
[12:05.700 --> 12:09.320]  I've taught a lot of people to use computers at various levels.
[12:09.520 --> 12:14.660]  And one of the things that happens is when you first start to use a computer, you see, like, the screen.
[12:14.800 --> 12:18.600]  You're, like, concerned about the mouse moving the mouse and using the keyboard, right?
[12:18.760 --> 12:20.540]  There's all this interface stuff that gets in the way.
[12:20.720 --> 12:25.820]  And actually, Donald Norman, the guy that did the Psychology of Everyday Things book, he talks about this a lot.
[12:25.820 --> 12:29.340]  He says, the interface is what's between you and what you want to do.
[12:30.040 --> 12:30.120]  Right?
[12:30.360 --> 12:37.020]  And it isn't until you get more skills that you, you know, you're moving your hand around on the mouse and you're not thinking about it.
[12:37.080 --> 12:38.980]  You can pull down a menu and you're not thinking about it.
[12:39.140 --> 12:41.060]  And then, of course, you can get into the concepts.
[12:41.100 --> 12:43.760]  You can get into what you really want to do with that computer.
[12:45.240 --> 12:45.600]  Sure.
[12:45.900 --> 12:46.540]  Give me a second.
[12:50.920 --> 12:51.280]  Okay.
[12:52.600 --> 12:52.960]  So...
[12:53.480 --> 12:54.720]  And let me just talk about communication.
[12:54.720 --> 12:59.000]  This is actually my whole talk at HAL 2001 about communicating ethics.
[12:59.200 --> 13:02.560]  People learn by communicating, by experimenting.
[13:02.900 --> 13:05.860]  People learn ethics from their peer group.
[13:06.020 --> 13:08.720]  And as hackers, a lot of times, a peer group is distributed.
[13:08.900 --> 13:12.800]  You know, we're doing email and IRC and maybe magazines and stuff like that.
[13:13.420 --> 13:18.480]  And, yeah, my experience is that there is sort of a shared hacker ethic.
[13:18.480 --> 13:21.740]  And, actually, part of why I like 2600 is they really work hard, I think.
[13:22.440 --> 13:24.080]  Not always in the text.
[13:24.200 --> 13:29.380]  Sometimes in the subtext of the magazine to say, you know, information is good.
[13:30.440 --> 13:31.620]  Vandalism, not so good.
[13:31.860 --> 13:33.980]  Criminal acts with computers, definitely not good.
[13:33.980 --> 13:41.200]  I mean, on various levels, they're either extremely clear or at least trying to push that agenda.
[13:41.500 --> 13:51.160]  And I think that hackers have, to a large extent, some shared ethic that talks about, as I said, information being good.
[13:52.020 --> 13:53.000]  Discovering things being good.
[13:53.180 --> 13:54.260]  Exploring things being good.
[13:54.700 --> 14:01.200]  And even though most of us don't learn that by sitting down with someone else, like we learned, you know, good and bad from our parents.
[14:01.220 --> 14:05.940]  Or like we learned, you know, not to jaywalk or something in school or something like that.
[14:06.060 --> 14:07.480]  Where we learned other ethical things.
[14:07.640 --> 14:12.040]  I think that hackers are still able to pick up on those shared ethics through our communication channels.
[14:14.200 --> 14:16.340]  Okay, so let's talk about some of the themes.
[14:16.520 --> 14:19.240]  I already mentioned these briefly, but some of the themes and some of the points.
[14:19.980 --> 14:21.640]  And you might have more, actually.
[14:21.780 --> 14:26.500]  And I thought of a few more, and this is just sort of a big category type of approach.
[14:26.760 --> 14:29.280]  So I'm not intending this to be exhaustive.
[14:29.540 --> 14:31.400]  But the value of information.
[14:32.600 --> 14:38.520]  A lot of times, people don't think of information as something that's tangible, that can be manipulated, that can be changed.
[14:39.380 --> 14:40.060]  That's contextual.
[14:40.380 --> 14:44.560]  So if I tell you the answer is 42, right?
[14:44.700 --> 14:45.660]  It doesn't help that much.
[14:45.660 --> 14:54.340]  If I tell you about the question, if I tell you about the context, if I tell you about the information, need that's kind of behind that, then all of a sudden that little datum can take on its own value.
[14:54.740 --> 15:07.360]  So I think understanding that information has value and that we can add value to information, value through what we call value-added processes in the information science lingo, I think it's something that doesn't get taught very much.
[15:07.360 --> 15:09.420]  And again, sometimes it's in the subtext.
[15:09.560 --> 15:13.080]  We know that if we have a database, we have...
[15:13.080 --> 15:16.100]  We might think of the continuum between data and information.
[15:16.240 --> 15:17.160]  I'm not a big believer in that.
[15:17.320 --> 15:18.280]  But sometimes it's effective.
[15:18.440 --> 15:20.320]  Anyway, we have a database with a bunch of stuff, right?
[15:21.220 --> 15:24.460]  And then we can make reports from that database.
[15:24.580 --> 15:25.020]  And what are we doing?
[15:25.160 --> 15:26.720]  We're adding value, right?
[15:26.720 --> 15:30.900]  We might actually be displaying less information than we have in the database.
[15:31.200 --> 15:33.420]  So there might actually be less stuff, right?
[15:33.520 --> 15:38.480]  We're adding value by, you know, organizing, highlighting, selecting, and so forth.
[15:38.600 --> 15:46.680]  And I think that a lot of people do this, but not a lot of people think about it as value-added processing for information.
[15:47.860 --> 15:49.800]  Another theme, of course, is information privacy.
[15:51.320 --> 15:58.580]  This is something that I actually think people do learn at an early age, but they don't learn at an early age in the computer realm.
[15:59.440 --> 16:10.120]  When very young children are out of the house for the first time, going to, like, first and second grade, they learn not to talk to strangers, not to take rides from strangers, you know, who to talk to.
[16:10.200 --> 16:15.260]  The policeman or the, you know, teacher or something like that if they think that something isn't going on right.
[16:15.260 --> 16:24.420]  So people actually learn some of these fairly early on, but do they learn the same thing with computer privacy, with what data about them might be getting out there on the Internet?
[16:25.120 --> 16:34.020]  Well, of course, a three-year-old, you know, or a seven-year-old or something, maybe it's not so much of an issue, they're probably not going and putting in a ton of their information on the Internet.
[16:34.160 --> 16:47.980]  But by the time people get to be in later grade school, they probably are using a lot of these websites and should know about data about them and where that might go, where it might be collected, what it might be used for.
[16:50.280 --> 16:55.100]  And, of course, as you get older, you can get a lot more sophisticated about information privacy.
[16:55.420 --> 16:57.000]  This is a whole other talk here, right?
[16:57.060 --> 17:01.520]  Information privacy is a very deep area with a lot of issues and a lot of different sort of stakeholders.
[17:01.760 --> 17:05.980]  You know, you have companies that really want to get your information for various purposes.
[17:05.980 --> 17:11.940]  You have people that want to get stuff but don't necessarily want to give up information and so forth.
[17:12.100 --> 17:20.920]  And I think that the things that we learn, the things that probably all of us have learned about information privacy, were trial by fire.
[17:21.340 --> 17:21.560]  Right?
[17:21.660 --> 17:23.780]  We suddenly discovered that we were on some mailing list.
[17:23.880 --> 17:25.860]  We suddenly discovered we were getting telemarketing calls.
[17:26.040 --> 17:30.540]  We suddenly discovered that, you know, someone was using our account and stuff like this.
[17:30.540 --> 17:32.820]  It's not ideal, right?
[17:32.880 --> 17:38.800]  What we'd like to do is at least have people go into their computer use with a notion of what some of the privacy risks are.
[17:39.420 --> 17:41.380]  Security is sort of another aspect.
[17:41.720 --> 17:49.540]  But, again, I think we can talk about the basic processes of security, of secrecy.
[17:49.540 --> 17:54.380]  Maybe not encryption at a young age, certainly by high school and definitely by college, we can talk about encryption.
[17:56.320 --> 17:57.840]  And the idea of data integrity.
[17:57.980 --> 18:05.840]  A lot of people don't think too much about data integrity as sort of low-end computer users.
[18:05.840 --> 18:08.680]  They're thinking about, you know, there's some file, I can print that file.
[18:08.940 --> 18:13.380]  But you also have to think about, well, you know, what happens when I send it from place to place?
[18:13.380 --> 18:15.700]  What happens if I drop the floppy disk?
[18:16.100 --> 18:16.900]  Things like this.
[18:17.120 --> 18:19.060]  Is it possible for my...
[18:20.020 --> 18:25.400]  Is it also possible for data about me, maybe in another situation, to be changed or false?
[18:27.060 --> 18:28.520]  Another theme is secrecy.
[18:28.660 --> 18:32.440]  And I think, again, this is something that very young people can understand to some extent.
[18:33.000 --> 18:37.060]  Because, you know, I mean, start with when you're two years old, you play peek-a-boo.
[18:37.300 --> 18:37.640]  Right?
[18:37.640 --> 18:39.440]  That's like your first brush with secrecy.
[18:41.480 --> 18:41.880]  Right?
[18:42.520 --> 18:43.440]  Where am I?
[18:43.580 --> 18:44.060]  I'm gone.
[18:44.780 --> 18:46.600]  You know, and there's the world again.
[18:46.880 --> 18:46.960]  Right?
[18:48.040 --> 18:48.980]  That's something early.
[18:49.120 --> 18:55.320]  And then later on, a lot of games and so forth are all about, you know, keeping secrets or having something that you know that someone else doesn't know.
[18:55.460 --> 18:56.780]  You know, card games, things like that.
[18:56.940 --> 18:59.060]  So I think that people have an understanding of secrecy.
[18:59.060 --> 19:05.800]  But again, are we doing anything to transfer that concept of when do you have secrets?
[19:05.940 --> 19:06.800]  When are secrets good?
[19:06.940 --> 19:07.760]  When are secrets bad?
[19:08.120 --> 19:10.860]  What are the costs of keeping information secret?
[19:11.520 --> 19:19.220]  You know, and making a decision about secrecy is something that I think an educated computer user does.
[19:19.360 --> 19:23.140]  And I think most people don't do, or even known to do.
[19:24.680 --> 19:28.060]  Well, let's talk about what this might actually look like with the curriculum.
[19:28.640 --> 19:37.060]  As I said earlier, what I'm really talking about is trying to come up with what might go into modules.
[19:38.240 --> 19:44.520]  You know, like a teaching module that might be delivered by, say, in the K-12 case, like a school media librarian.
[19:44.800 --> 19:49.440]  In the college case, it might be part of like an English 101 type of thing.
[19:49.660 --> 19:57.160]  You know, in other words, the things that all the students go through at some point may or may not be taught by an actual teacher.
[19:57.160 --> 20:00.340]  It might be taught, as I said, by librarians and stuff like that.
[20:01.580 --> 20:07.960]  And I just sort of dreamed up, thinking about when people are getting introduced to computers, a couple of points.
[20:07.960 --> 20:12.280]  And I'm a professor at UNC, so I'm a professor at UNC.
[20:13.300 --> 20:16.080]  And I suggest it because it's great because it's not quite right.
[20:16.680 --> 20:32.420]  And I'm not absolutely right because that's when most people are, when you're turning, say, 16 or 17 or 15, that's when you're undergoing a transition in life from a lot of supervised activity to a lot of less supervised activity.
[20:32.420 --> 20:40.720]  And I think that's really a good time to hit people with some of this knowledge because your computer activity is going to become a lot less supervised as well.
[20:40.980 --> 20:47.470]  You know, if you're on AOL, maybe 16 is the age of which the parental controls get lightened up a little bit by your parents.
[20:48.360 --> 20:51.160]  Anyway, but I'm open to change on these.
[20:51.160 --> 20:56.760]  But as I said, I want to try to make this realistic for schools to do at a minimum level.
[20:56.920 --> 21:05.500]  And I've actually been working or talking with the people at the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, CPSR, which is an organization I'm involved with.
[21:05.660 --> 21:07.580]  And they have a North Carolina chapter.
[21:07.840 --> 21:25.120]  And what sort of got me thinking about this topic and ended up with me before you today is that I'd really like to see some of these ideas or whatever the ideas turn out to be, you know, once they're worked on a little more, in that North Carolina standard high school competency.
[21:25.400 --> 21:41.260]  In other words, if someone's graduating high school and we want them to know how to use Microsoft Word or something similar to produce a letter or a document, shouldn't we also want them to know, you know, a little bit about, say, data security, a little bit about information privacy,
[21:41.460 --> 21:45.160]  a little bit about some of these other topics that I've been talking about.
[21:45.400 --> 21:47.340]  And I certainly think we do, you know, personally.
[21:47.660 --> 21:53.980]  And it's really not, as I said before, we're at a skill level, for the most part, in what's being delivered to students.
[21:54.020 --> 21:55.080]  And that's not inappropriate.
[21:55.120 --> 21:56.440]  Certainly the skills have a role.
[21:56.580 --> 21:58.820]  But I think we also need to deliver some of the concepts.
[21:58.940 --> 21:59.920]  And I haven't seen a lot of them.
[22:00.020 --> 22:00.660]  You had a comment?
[22:00.880 --> 22:03.060]  Just reflect the URL in CPSR.
[22:03.980 --> 22:06.680]  Oh, believe it or not, this is actually pretty cool.
[22:06.680 --> 22:09.880]  The CPSR URL for the North Carolina chapter...
[22:09.880 --> 22:11.960]  CPSR is just CPSR.org.
[22:12.120 --> 22:16.520]  But the North Carolina chapter is www.rtp.nc.us.
[22:16.800 --> 22:18.660]  It's a Research Triangle Park chapter.
[22:18.880 --> 22:21.300]  And the guy that started the chapter...
[22:21.300 --> 22:27.240]  I was one of the co-founders, but the guy that actually started the chapter happened to get that wondrous little URL at some point.
[22:27.500 --> 22:28.920]  RTP is a Research Triangle Park.
[22:29.080 --> 22:33.100]  That's where the chapter is based in Central North Carolina.
[22:34.300 --> 22:35.780]  Yeah, but you can find this from the chapter.
[22:35.900 --> 22:38.120]  They have a chapter listing page at CPSR.
[22:38.360 --> 22:41.600]  And what I'll do when I get back is I'll get this...
[22:41.600 --> 22:43.120]  I'm very embarrassed to be using PowerPoint.
[22:43.300 --> 22:43.760]  I apologize.
[22:44.320 --> 22:46.900]  What I'll do when I get back is I'll put it in a proper webpage.
[22:47.540 --> 22:49.980]  And I'll get it mounted up on the CPSR site.
[22:50.020 --> 22:51.200]  So it'll be out there for public comment.
[22:52.780 --> 22:54.820]  Yeah, I'm really embarrassed I'm using PowerPoint.
[22:54.820 --> 22:56.860]  But there was no network access.
[22:57.040 --> 23:01.900]  And I just didn't have the right tools to spend time setting up webpages.
[23:09.830 --> 23:11.970]  Yeah, well that's a very good question.
[23:12.050 --> 23:15.510]  The question was, isn't 10th grade a little bit too early to get people learning about ethics?
[23:15.630 --> 23:16.670]  And basically it's not.
[23:16.830 --> 23:21.090]  But there are a couple of qualifications to that.
[23:21.090 --> 23:27.630]  I mean, what I think and my approach to teaching is really to make sure people have concepts.
[23:27.730 --> 23:30.330]  And I teach college level, so I know that's a little different than high school level.
[23:31.150 --> 23:35.170]  But if I'm teaching people to do network news, right?
[23:35.230 --> 23:40.570]  If I'm teaching them to do email, yes, I want them to know how to use a particular client.
[23:40.710 --> 23:42.510]  I want them to know how to use like 10 for news.
[23:42.670 --> 23:49.570]  I want them to know how to use, you know, Pine or Outlook or whatever it is for email, right?
[23:49.570 --> 23:52.870]  But the first thing I teach them is, here's what an email message is.
[23:52.910 --> 23:54.150]  Here's what a network news message is.
[23:54.150 --> 23:55.790]  Here's how it gets from place to place.
[23:56.030 --> 24:05.450]  I give them the concepts with the understanding that later on when their email client gets upgraded to a different system or whatever, they're okay.
[24:05.850 --> 24:09.030]  The concepts apply even though the interface, right?
[24:09.130 --> 24:10.930]  The actual implementation is a little bit different.
[24:11.090 --> 24:15.670]  So I really see a value in doing this sort of conceptual underpinning.
[24:15.670 --> 24:21.890]  Now, but I don't want to make the argument that you have to know about like data integrity in order to write a document with Word.
[24:22.250 --> 24:25.170]  You know, I think that maybe is a little weak and that's what you're pointing out.
[24:25.330 --> 24:34.370]  But I don't think it's far-fetched to say that, you know, you're sitting down in front of a computer, you're using the Internet, well let's talk a little bit about what's on the Internet.
[24:34.650 --> 24:37.730]  You know, let's, and I'll show this in a moment in a high school example.
[24:37.730 --> 24:42.350]  I mean, let's say, let's find some false information on the Internet, right?
[24:42.430 --> 24:47.150]  Let's find some information and assess whether we believe it, whether, you know, the trustworthiness.
[24:47.490 --> 24:51.610]  So I think that those types of, I mean, that's basically concepts plus skills.
[24:51.770 --> 24:57.270]  You know, you're delivering the concept and then you're using it in a skill environment to drive the point home.
[24:57.530 --> 24:58.570]  So yeah, so I think it's okay.
[24:58.730 --> 25:02.970]  Let me add just one other point about ethics, which is something that probably a lot of people don't know.
[25:02.970 --> 25:21.750]  And that is, despite the fact that people have to take an analytic exam for the SAT, which you take in like 11th or 12th grade, usually 11th grade, the psychologists, educational or developmental psychologists will tell you that humans do not fully develop their analytical skills until the age of 18 to 20 or 21.
[25:22.670 --> 25:37.870]  So in other words, it's not necessarily realistic to expect someone in, say, the 10th grade, you know, whatever, 15 or something years old, to be able to, you know, work through in the same way that they will a few years later some of the deeper concepts.
[25:38.250 --> 25:46.650]  So it might not be realistic to say to somebody, gee, let's sit around and talk about, like, I don't know, we'll talk about VeriSign and we'll talk about their privacy policy.
[25:46.650 --> 25:48.930]  And we'll talk about the companies that might want to use them.
[25:49.010 --> 25:51.590]  We'll talk about individuals that have data used.
[25:51.770 --> 25:53.150]  And we can do that.
[25:53.370 --> 25:54.990]  You know, most of the people in the audience can probably do that.
[25:54.990 --> 25:58.510]  Because even if we're younger than 18, we're probably pretty sophisticated in our thinking about this.
[25:58.690 --> 26:01.350]  But it might be a little much to expect at a high school level.
[26:01.670 --> 26:04.470]  So, like I said, I think, you know, concepts.
[26:04.930 --> 26:08.210]  But concepts, hopefully, in practice.
[26:08.850 --> 26:09.310]  Yeah, go ahead.
[26:10.130 --> 26:11.650]  Since general information
[26:15.850 --> 26:19.550]  ethics be a subject of something like math, or math has an impact?
[26:20.630 --> 26:23.830]  Are you saying should information ethics be in general ethics in college?
[26:24.230 --> 26:27.050]  Or are you saying should general ethics be part of high school?
[26:27.610 --> 26:30.450]  I'm saying at whatever level that this is going to be here.
[26:30.590 --> 26:30.670]  Right.
[26:30.790 --> 26:31.550]  Whether it's categories,
[26:36.570 --> 26:36.890]  it's not.
[26:37.130 --> 26:37.610]  It's not there.
[26:37.790 --> 26:37.830]  Yeah.
[26:41.840 --> 26:43.460]  Well, we know that this is...
[26:43.460 --> 26:47.900]  Well, you know because I put it up on the screen that I'm trying to talk about information ethics, right?
[26:49.280 --> 26:51.340]  It doesn't need really to get packaged that way.
[26:51.740 --> 26:59.620]  This is the stuff you've got to know in addition to the skills to be an effective and safe and educated user of computers.
[26:59.620 --> 27:08.420]  So, yeah, I think the discussion about the actual ethics as a discipline and as courses and stuff is kind of separate from this.
[27:10.240 --> 27:10.580]  Yeah.
[27:10.580 --> 27:10.920]  Yeah, go ahead.
[27:15.960 --> 27:17.780]  Yeah, I was going to say that too, but I...
[27:17.780 --> 27:21.040]  Yeah, I was going to say that too, but I...
[27:22.730 --> 27:23.110]  Yeah.
[27:23.570 --> 27:24.790]  People learn ethics.
[27:25.230 --> 27:27.470]  This is what I said about hacker communication before, right?
[27:27.550 --> 27:29.050]  People learn ethics throughout their life.
[27:29.390 --> 27:35.190]  You know, and you don't get it by and large from sitting in a classroom having someone put some notes up on a screen.
[27:35.350 --> 27:37.610]  You know, you learn it by doing and by communicating.
[27:38.830 --> 27:54.790]  And so, what I'm hoping here is to kind of plant that seed where some of those ethical formations happen in the computer realm, instead of what I often see, which is, you know, you're following some set of steps, some procedure, and you're not really thinking a lot about,
[27:54.990 --> 27:58.150]  you know, really anything beyond that set of steps or procedure.
[27:58.570 --> 27:59.950]  Let me go ahead and work through this a little more.
[28:00.750 --> 28:04.150]  Like I said, I value questions, but I want to make sure I get through with the presentation as well.
[28:05.850 --> 28:08.970]  So, anyway, we'll get this up on the web page.
[28:09.030 --> 28:12.190]  And I did put my email on the first screen, and I'm very easy to find on the Internet.
[28:12.390 --> 28:17.670]  If you type in Gregory Newby instead of Greg Newby, you Google him all over the place.
[28:17.810 --> 28:18.590]  You can find me very easily.
[28:20.950 --> 28:31.510]  Okay, so, what I did was just an idea as to what some of the topics might be at a, like, K-6, but I said 5th grade or so.
[28:31.510 --> 28:38.650]  And I'm not an expert on early childhood or elementary education, so this is where I'd want to...
[28:39.130 --> 28:40.390]  I'd definitely want to get some guidance.
[28:40.550 --> 28:44.090]  I think for the high school and for the college, I'm a little more realistic.
[28:44.470 --> 28:46.730]  But anyway, what can you think about in grade school?
[28:46.890 --> 28:48.870]  Well, what's information about me?
[28:48.950 --> 28:50.590]  Who knows about me?
[28:50.790 --> 28:52.130]  How can I describe myself?
[28:52.290 --> 28:53.010]  Things like that.
[28:53.250 --> 28:56.450]  And, of course, how might this get out there on a computer?
[28:58.050 --> 28:58.950]  What about secrets?
[28:59.130 --> 29:00.010]  Why do we keep secrets?
[29:00.250 --> 29:01.710]  When do we not keep secrets?
[29:05.010 --> 29:06.630]  And what are computers for?
[29:06.850 --> 29:09.730]  You know, basically, what kind of things can I find out on a computer?
[29:10.210 --> 29:16.130]  And part of this, to be subversive here for a moment, part of this is to get people questioning, right?
[29:17.290 --> 29:20.350]  We've got to get rid of it's on a computer and therefore it's right.
[29:20.810 --> 29:22.790]  You know, this is... we know it's ridiculous.
[29:23.250 --> 29:37.190]  And to get people at an earlier age to embrace the notion that computers are very good at many things, but just because it's on a computer doesn't mean it's right, I think is, you know, very worthwhile.
[29:39.350 --> 29:49.050]  So, yeah, for high school, I'm thinking something along these lines to talk about similar types of questions, but at a higher level.
[29:49.250 --> 29:50.490]  What data about me exists?
[29:50.570 --> 29:52.850]  What sort of privacy expectation do I have?
[29:53.630 --> 29:58.150]  Think a little bit about... actually, I didn't listen to this here, but information ownership.
[29:58.370 --> 29:59.390]  Who owns that information?
[29:59.490 --> 30:05.490]  Who has access and who has rights to input, modify, delete the information?
[30:05.490 --> 30:10.130]  In high school, they're thinking a little bit about databases, at least in the North Carolina curriculum I mentioned earlier.
[30:10.390 --> 30:17.150]  So, like, you know, delete, modify types of things might be very easy to talk about.
[30:17.790 --> 30:20.370]  Find and discuss erroneous information on the Internet.
[30:21.570 --> 30:22.930]  Something we can all do.
[30:23.090 --> 30:28.230]  And what are some of the differences between effective and ineffective use of tools?
[30:28.430 --> 30:32.270]  And how do these tools add value to information?
[30:32.270 --> 30:37.550]  So, what can we do, as I said, an example from the high school curriculum is like a spreadsheet.
[30:37.870 --> 30:41.710]  You know, what can we do with a spreadsheet and some raw data or a database and some raw data?
[30:41.950 --> 30:46.470]  Or, you know, some stuff that's written on a piece of paper and we'll get it out of there on the computer.
[30:46.810 --> 30:51.530]  And what value that's added can we identify during that process?
[30:51.530 --> 30:59.410]  And I think that exercise gets you outside of, you know, process and skill.
[30:59.670 --> 31:05.130]  You know, doing task one, task two, task three, and into thinking a little bit about what's happening.
[31:05.330 --> 31:10.650]  You know, what are some of the other things that are changing in addition to those, you know, marks up on your screen.
[31:13.910 --> 31:24.370]  And, you know, then in the college, as someone mentioned, this is where you might actually be thinking about ethics as more of an academic study area.
[31:24.390 --> 31:25.970]  Maybe we can't talk about it as ethics here.
[31:26.510 --> 31:30.370]  Previously, I think you were just talking about it as stuff, you know, computer skills.
[31:30.850 --> 31:34.170]  I'm sorry, computer concepts that are related to the skills.
[31:35.550 --> 31:39.570]  Yeah, so that's where you're thinking more, I think, in college, you're thinking more about data integrity.
[31:39.770 --> 31:46.910]  You're thinking about security, information as a commodity, evaluating information.
[31:47.090 --> 31:52.770]  In fact, one of the things that people do learn in college, sometimes they learn in high school.
[31:52.790 --> 31:56.410]  I think a lot of times people are self-taught, though, is how to find information.
[31:56.530 --> 32:00.090]  You know, how to use the library, how to use the Internet to find information.
[32:00.710 --> 32:03.950]  And if it's being taught correctly, which I know a lot of times it's not.
[32:04.150 --> 32:07.430]  I shouldn't necessarily say correctly, but it's being taught fairly thoroughly.
[32:07.730 --> 32:10.250]  You don't just find out about how to find stuff.
[32:10.410 --> 32:12.430]  You find out about, is that good?
[32:12.670 --> 32:13.970]  You know, does it meet your needs?
[32:14.090 --> 32:15.110]  Is it verifiable?
[32:15.290 --> 32:16.030]  Is it timely?
[32:16.150 --> 32:16.750]  Is it relevant?
[32:16.930 --> 32:18.470]  You know, all these other qualities of information.
[32:18.730 --> 32:22.190]  So I think at the college level, certainly, you're doing that.
[32:22.190 --> 32:23.830]  Maybe somewhat at the high school level.
[32:24.330 --> 32:32.790]  And the good news about some of this sort of basic evaluation of information which I don't think is the whole picture of what I'm trying to present.
[32:32.970 --> 32:42.490]  But the evaluation of information, which is a valuable component for this hacker ethic I'm talking about, is we already have structure for doing it.
[32:42.650 --> 32:51.790]  You know, when you go to college, usually you get a couple of hours in the library as part of English 101 or something for bibliographic instruction, how to use a library, stuff like that.
[32:51.970 --> 32:58.050]  So in other words, there's already like a place where some of this type of learning happens, but I think without the concepts.
[32:58.250 --> 33:03.930]  And I think adding concepts, if packaged, delivered, communicated, and so forth, is pretty doable.
[33:06.250 --> 33:06.650]  Oops.
[33:07.050 --> 33:07.370]  One button.
[33:12.260 --> 33:12.600]  Aha.
[33:13.820 --> 33:14.620]  Can we go back?
[33:23.050 --> 33:25.410]  Okay, so how does this happen?
[33:25.590 --> 33:28.090]  Well, we don't have a national curriculum.
[33:28.930 --> 33:35.850]  You know, we keep hearing, well, we have this little testing thing, you know, that the government keeps talking about, trying to have standardized tests.
[33:36.350 --> 33:39.670]  And that's a whole, you know, I don't think that that's the way to go.
[33:39.690 --> 33:42.710]  with teaching information ethics, standardized tests, and stuff like that.
[33:42.910 --> 33:49.170]  But we don't necessarily even have a way of communicating, you know, on a national basis, what a good curriculum could be.
[33:49.370 --> 34:06.610]  So I think what, as I said, what I'd like to do, and what I think is, you know, potentially workable, is to develop some modules, and get those out into some schools, essentially for testing, by willing teachers, by willing librarians at a college level,
[34:07.990 --> 34:09.510]  fifth grade, or whatever.
[34:09.510 --> 34:22.770]  You know, elementary school level, and high school level, and see how they work, gather feedback, get teachers, because teachers are smart, you know, they know the people they're talking, they're talking with better than someone from the outside does,
[34:23.130 --> 34:27.710]  to customize, to think about the, you know, what should be in here, and how to do it.
[34:27.710 --> 34:37.330]  And what I'd like to see come out of that, is something that, as a college instructor, and some of you probably are teachers in the classroom as well, you get all the time, it's like a little instructional packet.
[34:37.910 --> 34:46.490]  You know, it's like, here's a bunch of stuff, here's some overhead slides, here's some posters, here's some readings, here's some flip cards, here's some games you can play, whatever it is, whatever seems appropriate.
[34:46.490 --> 34:54.130]  Just a variety of things that you can use to deliver some of these curriculum ideas, some of this content.
[34:54.350 --> 34:57.650]  And I think that's pretty doable on a ramp up basis.
[34:57.950 --> 35:08.970]  And then what I'd like to see, of course, at the end, is if we're having, in the cases where we have a standard curriculum that deals with computers, to get this in there.
[35:08.970 --> 35:23.490]  And, you know, to have people go to the state boards, and, you know, the regions, whoever is doing this standardization, and say, hey, here's something that we've been working with, we've been testing, it's gone through these different schools, and you're already mandating,
[35:23.790 --> 35:29.490]  you know, let's say, word processing and stuff like that, let's get this in there, as well.
[35:29.650 --> 35:31.530]  And make it, you know, hopefully fairly easy.
[35:32.350 --> 35:42.910]  So this, I think, to me, this is definitely a multi-year process, just like getting any kind of effective computer literacy into any sort of curriculum is a multi-year process.
[35:43.170 --> 35:50.530]  But multi-year processes have to start at some point, and this is really the starting point I'm proposing here.
[35:54.250 --> 35:59.030]  Let's come back to what some of the relationship is to hacking here.
[35:59.030 --> 36:03.910]  I went through some of the examples, and I thought of some other ones, and I said, you can probably think of some others as well.
[36:04.030 --> 36:08.970]  It might be best, if you have sort of a particular idea, maybe you can email it to me, or get it to me after the conference.
[36:10.050 --> 36:20.330]  And I'd love to incorporate more thoughts, because I think, I think it's important to deliver, like, a menu to someone that we're trying to deliver this type of instruction.
[36:20.590 --> 36:26.010]  You know, not say, you must teach A, B, and C, which tends to happen with mathematics and stuff.
[36:26.010 --> 36:34.570]  But say, here's some of the concepts we want to get across, and here's some of the choices you can make for, you know, how to get people thinking about that.
[36:35.490 --> 36:43.190]  So anyway, getting back to the hacking idea, as I said earlier, I think that hackers really have a handle on this stuff.
[36:43.190 --> 36:52.550]  And I think that, for the most part, we're self-taught, on some of these conceptual things anyway, although we learn it through different ways of communicating with each other as well.
[36:52.890 --> 36:58.550]  I would like to regularize, regularize, I'd like to regularize, some of the knowledge that we have.
[36:58.970 --> 37:13.190]  Not necessarily some of the ambition, you know, it's not necessarily the case that I want to turn everybody into a hacker that is, you know, whatever, trying to explore and maybe penetrate and maybe, you know, use in unintended ways all the systems that we encounter.
[37:14.630 --> 37:20.590]  That's not necessarily an outcome here, but I think that one of the outcomes is that people will be more questioning, less trusting.
[37:20.590 --> 37:21.910]  This to me is good.
[37:22.850 --> 37:27.090]  That people will be rewarded for curiosity and exploration.
[37:27.450 --> 37:28.470]  I think this is good.
[37:28.690 --> 37:34.390]  And so we'll be creating people that have some of these hacker characteristics.
[37:34.970 --> 37:37.410]  And whether or not that creates hackers, I don't know.
[37:37.590 --> 37:39.450]  I have no real theory on that.
[37:39.610 --> 38:00.050]  But I think that a lot of the characteristics that we share overall, sort of this amorphous and not 100% shared, not 100% overlap or anything like that, but the sort of hacker ethic that we have is really desirable for any effective and informed computer user,
[38:00.190 --> 38:01.250]  at least at the conceptual level.
[38:01.390 --> 38:13.870]  Like I said, whether or not someone is going to explore the system, try everything out like a lot of us probably do, you know, look for weaknesses, you know, sit down and, you know, give some thought to it, that's not so relevant.
[38:13.870 --> 38:28.770]  But that someone's going to identify that there are flaws, that's going to identify that there is a system or a process at the other end of this computer, of this website, of this particular application, that might have made an error, that might have,
[38:28.770 --> 38:31.970]  you know, left a vulnerability, that sort of thing.
[38:31.970 --> 38:44.630]  That, you know, certainly that we have information about us, that we have some ability to control, that we have some ability to save secrets, we have some ability to make information public, right?
[38:44.730 --> 38:54.010]  These are all things that are, as I said, part of what we share, and I think part of what would be good to get out to the general computer user.
[38:54.010 --> 39:10.650]  And especially, let me remind you, I'm not necessarily trying to say that this will make that, you know, high school principal that suspended somebody for, you know, pointing out that they forgot to lock down their, you know, PDC or something like that.
[39:11.250 --> 39:14.550]  It's not necessarily going to make them see the light, right?
[39:14.730 --> 39:20.590]  But the people that we're teaching today, they're going to be the high school principal in 20 years or 30 years.
[39:20.590 --> 39:26.410]  Or they're going to be the, you know, the entrepreneur in 10 or 20 or 30 years.
[39:26.750 --> 39:29.270]  And so this is sort of a long view thing.
[39:34.730 --> 39:37.430]  Actually, I've talked about this already a little bit now.
[39:37.650 --> 39:47.390]  The idea that people are better informed will hopefully be more empowered.
[39:48.790 --> 39:53.790]  But, of course, we might argue that being better informed is good in its own right.
[40:01.160 --> 40:03.080]  Yeah, I think we talked about all those.
[40:03.300 --> 40:13.840]  But these are really things that, to me, are our shared skill and our shared ideas and things that have worked for us.
[40:13.840 --> 40:22.400]  And not only have worked for us, but through people with these types of attitudes have really created everything that we have today in the technology world.
[40:22.740 --> 40:29.360]  You know, it is this curiosity and, whatever you want to call it, thinking out of the box that's worked.
[40:29.900 --> 40:35.160]  So, as I said, we have a few minutes for comments that people might have.
[40:35.160 --> 40:36.600]  There's actually a mic in the middle.
[40:36.700 --> 40:40.720]  It might be good if there are a few people you can talk up, walk up to the mic.
[40:40.780 --> 40:42.540]  Otherwise, I can repeat your question.
[40:43.160 --> 40:44.440]  And I'm going to work on this.
[40:44.560 --> 40:46.760]  I have the ideas that you see here.
[40:46.920 --> 40:48.400]  I have some other ideas on paper.
[40:48.580 --> 40:49.620]  I'm setting up the webpages.
[40:50.440 --> 40:56.200]  And because I teach in the School of Information and Library Science, I actually train librarians, among other things.
[40:56.360 --> 41:01.560]  Actually, I deal more with the systems, the geeky people, you know, the system administrators and stuff like that.
[41:01.720 --> 41:04.180]  But I also have impact on the library curriculum.
[41:04.180 --> 41:09.920]  And so, I think that's one avenue that I'm going to take to try to get this into those schools.
[41:10.180 --> 41:15.320]  Because the librarians are, a lot of the times, people that are doing the college instruction on computer use.
[41:15.500 --> 41:18.960]  Sort of the basic, you know, common denominator computer use.
[41:19.160 --> 41:22.740]  As well as the high school use.
[41:23.700 --> 41:25.580]  Okay, so, questions or comments?
[41:25.900 --> 41:26.940]  Or we can wrap up early.
[41:35.780 --> 41:36.540]  Extracurricular groups?
[41:38.040 --> 41:39.640]  I think they would be more effective.
[41:40.220 --> 41:45.320]  But I think it's, yeah, it's hard to make that sort of a, like something that just happens across the board.
[41:45.680 --> 41:48.500]  But yeah, I think having a, I better repeat the question.
[41:48.640 --> 41:54.080]  The question was whether extracurricular groups might be more effective for helping to deliver some of these hacker ethics or information ethics.
[41:54.080 --> 41:55.260]  And I think they would be.
[41:56.580 --> 42:03.740]  And some of the, if we come up with some of these modules and stuff, maybe they would be useful to a computer club, you know, or a math club or something like that.
[42:03.940 --> 42:08.680]  Where in K-12 school, a lot of people are learning some of their computer skills.
[42:09.860 --> 42:16.160]  So, I mean, hopefully, if we come up with the concepts in some modules, then hopefully they'll be kind of general purpose.
[42:17.420 --> 42:18.680]  To be applied by others.
[42:19.620 --> 42:20.040]  Yeah, thank you.
[42:21.220 --> 42:21.880]  Any other questions?
[42:22.760 --> 42:23.580]  Yeah, go ahead, sir.
[42:54.960 --> 42:56.240]  Okay, okay.
[42:56.520 --> 42:58.700]  If I understand, and this might have been good to speak about that.
[42:58.840 --> 42:59.420]  If I just missed on the tape.
[42:59.560 --> 43:09.940]  But if I understand the question, the, the, the synopsis is, um, uh, in the library world, but elsewhere, what's the bigger picture for things like that?
[43:09.940 --> 43:11.120]  Things like information privacy.
[43:11.520 --> 43:15.180]  Especially, I think, information privacy and filtering and things like that.
[43:15.660 --> 43:22.860]  And the answer is that I think there's a lot of organizations that are fighting on a lot of different fronts.
[43:23.580 --> 43:28.800]  And by and large, the fight has not been incredibly effective.
[43:28.980 --> 43:31.200]  I think it has been effective sometimes.
[43:31.740 --> 43:42.400]  But what we have is, in many cases, I mentioned the example of a high school principal that's kind of afraid because the kids know more than he does, right, or she does.
[43:42.920 --> 43:48.720]  What we have is, I think, the desire to not have freedom of information.
[43:49.060 --> 43:52.000]  You know, to lock down and restrict access.
[43:53.460 --> 43:56.160]  And believe me this, don't take my word for it.
[43:56.320 --> 43:58.160]  Come back to all these other sessions.
[43:58.420 --> 44:04.360]  The idea of locking down information is not the way to go in most cases.
[44:04.540 --> 44:08.520]  It's just not effective, not cost effective, doesn't work very well.
[44:10.460 --> 44:13.180]  And can create more problems than it solves.
[44:13.340 --> 44:27.180]  We have this guy who's talking, I think he's tonight or tomorrow night, the Robert Steele guy, the ex-spy, who comes and talks about his whole thing as that the government should greatly decrease the quantity of secrecy that it has.
[44:28.380 --> 44:29.040]  This one?
[44:32.430 --> 44:33.470]  Open Source Intelligence.
[44:33.470 --> 44:34.970]  Yeah, the same exact guy who's here.
[44:35.190 --> 44:37.190]  I think he's giving me a talk tonight and tomorrow night.
[44:37.370 --> 44:52.070]  But I mean, for hours and hours on end, he'll explain to you and he'll use statistics and examples much better than I can of where there are all these efforts to have basically security through obscurity or security through secrecy.
[44:52.070 --> 44:57.290]  And it's tremendously costly and is only sometimes appropriate.
[44:57.510 --> 44:59.070]  It's not that it's inappropriate completely.
[44:59.770 --> 45:04.170]  He's not making the argument, in this case anyway, that every single datum should be public.
[45:04.410 --> 45:04.670]  Right?
[45:04.870 --> 45:16.410]  But he's saying that overall, the efforts to prevent access to information is just disproportionate with the value that comes from protecting it.
[45:16.410 --> 45:20.510]  In other words, you're better off just making it available on all fronts.
[45:24.770 --> 45:25.270]  Well, right.
[45:25.350 --> 45:25.810]  That's what I'm saying.
[45:25.950 --> 45:27.270]  There might be some cases where...
[45:27.950 --> 45:30.030]  And like I said, he'll do this better than I can.
[45:30.150 --> 45:33.730]  But there are cases where secrecy works, where secrecy is effective.
[45:34.030 --> 45:36.370]  There are cases where it's a matter of short-term secrecy.
[45:36.870 --> 45:42.170]  So you don't want to necessarily have everyone know where the president is going this morning at what time.
[45:42.390 --> 45:43.670]  But once he gets there, it's okay.
[45:44.230 --> 45:44.350]  Right?
[45:44.530 --> 45:45.390]  Something along those lines.
[45:46.470 --> 45:57.050]  But anyway, I think a lot of the discussion in library rules, the ruling you talked about is called COPA, the Child Online Protection Act.
[45:58.010 --> 46:10.030]  A lot of this is coming from the same sort of, unfortunately, misinformed point of view that somehow it can all be better if we can just prevent access to certain types of things.
[46:10.030 --> 46:18.250]  And we can somehow make decisions, you know, essentially automatically or using some filtering software or something about what's good and what's bad and what's allowed and what's not allowed.
[46:18.410 --> 46:19.630]  And it sounds good.
[46:19.650 --> 46:22.030]  And it can sometimes work on a small scale.
[46:22.030 --> 46:25.850]  But in most cases, it's not going to work on a large scale.
[46:26.110 --> 46:30.450]  So, you know, in the case of filtering, all you've got to do is get on the web, on the Internet.
[46:30.690 --> 46:36.150]  You can go to ALA.org, the American Library Association, which is one of the biggest membership organizations in the country.
[46:36.150 --> 46:43.090]  And they have, actually, they don't do this research, unfortunately, but I think they have the links to evaluation of the filtering software.
[46:43.470 --> 46:45.370]  And it's not that it doesn't work.
[46:46.190 --> 46:49.130]  It's that it doesn't work nearly as well as we'd like it to work.
[46:50.210 --> 46:55.250]  You know, actually, I'll give you that while we're on filtering for a sec, information science concept.
[46:55.250 --> 46:56.750]  We have this thing called recall and decision.
[46:57.590 --> 46:59.650]  I give a query to a website.
[47:00.610 --> 47:03.530]  I want to get only good answers.
[47:03.530 --> 47:04.170]  Okay?
[47:04.330 --> 47:06.350]  If I only want to get good answers, just give me one.
[47:07.150 --> 47:09.450]  Let's say I'm doing a web query and I want to get hits, right?
[47:09.610 --> 47:10.410]  Just give me one hit.
[47:10.570 --> 47:15.670]  Because if that hit is relevant, that one hit is relevant, I have 100% precision.
[47:16.370 --> 47:16.730]  Right?
[47:16.830 --> 47:18.010]  None of the answers were wrong.
[47:18.070 --> 47:18.710]  I have a 50-50.
[47:18.950 --> 47:20.610]  If it's not relevant, then I have 0%.
[47:21.490 --> 47:22.650]  But 100% precision.
[47:22.870 --> 47:28.610]  If I want to get every single possibly relevant website that's out there, simply return the whole web.
[47:29.250 --> 47:34.070]  And then I have 100% recall, which means that every possible answer that applies is out there.
[47:34.450 --> 47:36.870]  There's this inverse relationship between... I'll do it this way, sorry.
[47:37.070 --> 47:39.870]  Inverse relationship between precision and recall.
[47:40.170 --> 47:42.510]  This is why filtering doesn't work.
[47:42.670 --> 47:45.890]  If I want to have 100% perfect filtering, no problem.
[47:46.630 --> 47:47.270]  Pull out the plug.
[47:48.150 --> 47:48.710]  Right?
[47:48.850 --> 47:53.070]  I've effectively blocked 100% of questionable websites.
[47:53.070 --> 48:02.970]  If I want to have 100% filtering, which doesn't block anything that it thinks is questionable and really isn't.
[48:03.110 --> 48:04.510]  In other words, false positives.
[48:04.870 --> 48:04.930]  Right?
[48:05.310 --> 48:05.870]  No problem.
[48:06.030 --> 48:06.750]  Turn off the filter.
[48:06.910 --> 48:08.090]  And let everything through.
[48:08.410 --> 48:08.670]  Okay?
[48:08.910 --> 48:12.550]  It's that never, never land in between that you can't get.
[48:13.110 --> 48:13.430]  Right?
[48:13.430 --> 48:19.530]  You can't say give me 100% effective filtering and never ever block, you know, a site inappropriately.
[48:19.690 --> 48:22.930]  Because for that you need some sort of artificial intelligence.
[48:23.350 --> 48:29.590]  The filtering system needs to have your head, you know, inside somehow to know what you think is right and wrong.
[48:29.870 --> 48:30.830]  And it just doesn't work.
[48:31.030 --> 48:35.270]  So anyway, this is sort of a long-winded answer with a couple of related points.
[48:35.270 --> 48:40.790]  But there are a lot of fights for better privacy.
[48:41.210 --> 48:42.690]  Sometimes it's on legislation.
[48:42.910 --> 48:43.970]  Sometimes it's on education.
[48:44.510 --> 48:50.690]  A lot of times the impetus comes from, you know, all the people that buy governors and senators and stuff.
[48:50.850 --> 48:54.210]  You know, big business wants to own your information.
[48:54.210 --> 48:56.830]  They don't want you to have a lot of rights to your information.
[48:56.850 --> 49:00.070]  So we have a lot of different processes and a lot of different fights going on.
[49:01.210 --> 49:03.470]  This is going to be the case, I would say, for 10 years.
[49:04.010 --> 49:05.310]  Just, you know, rough guess.
[49:05.470 --> 49:13.790]  It's going to be a long time before we really know, for example, if I create some record about me in someone's database.
[49:14.010 --> 49:15.650]  You know, a credit report or something like that.
[49:15.870 --> 49:16.790]  Whose data is that?
[49:17.550 --> 49:18.270]  Is that me?
[49:18.450 --> 49:19.070]  Do I own that?
[49:19.170 --> 49:19.850]  Do I have control?
[49:20.090 --> 49:21.070]  Do you have control?
[49:21.230 --> 49:22.530]  Does whoever paid for it have control?
[49:22.710 --> 49:29.210]  And we see across the board, you know, different cases where different answers might make more sense.
[49:29.830 --> 49:35.610]  You know, health data versus credit data versus something that we wrote, like a copyright situation.
[49:35.610 --> 49:36.910]  It's just very complicated.
[49:38.090 --> 49:41.130]  And as I said, there are different stakeholders with different opinions.
[49:42.630 --> 49:44.750]  We have probably another minute or two.
[49:44.950 --> 49:45.310]  Yeah, go ahead.
[49:45.310 --> 49:49.830]  I see a bigger problem for you, trying to present this to schools.
[49:51.290 --> 50:02.610]  Based on this question as well, there seems to be a general philosophy in schools that are going to be about, which is that they need to control the way they're going to be.
[50:03.430 --> 50:06.450]  And so, I mean, how are you doing that?
[50:06.450 --> 50:06.750]  Right.
[50:07.050 --> 50:07.130]  Okay.
[50:07.290 --> 50:11.890]  Yeah, so the comment is basically that schools have sort of a control mentality.
[50:13.790 --> 50:16.650]  This is true, certainly, you know, undoubtedly.
[50:17.090 --> 50:26.910]  But we also have the mentality in schools of having deliverables, of having like a standard of stuff that you should know.
[50:26.910 --> 50:30.150]  And really what I'm trying to do is get this added to the stuff that you should know.
[50:30.610 --> 50:42.730]  With the argument that I think is fairly appealing, that if people are going to be effective computer users, they should be able to think a little bit about the concepts that are behind the other computers that are on the data side.
[50:42.730 --> 50:48.130]  So on the funny side, I mean, teachers and principals don't want kids to come outside the clock.
[50:48.670 --> 50:50.070]  I mean, you're...
[50:50.070 --> 50:52.870]  This is, yeah, this is where the subversive part comes in.
[50:53.150 --> 50:55.650]  And, yeah, because you're right.
[50:55.770 --> 50:59.390]  I mean, I am trying to create people that have some of this hacker ethic.
[51:01.190 --> 51:10.290]  Yeah, well, here, it's really like a double-edged sword, because you put some kid in an art class, and you want them to be Van Gogh, right?
[51:10.290 --> 51:15.730]  And you put someone in a math class, and, God forbid, they should be a Newton, right?
[51:15.930 --> 51:18.050]  Because if they start doing their own stuff, they're going to fail.
[51:20.290 --> 51:24.330]  And computers... you can use a computer to make art, right?
[51:24.510 --> 51:38.370]  So I'm optimistic that actually, as people lighten up, basically, as some of the younger generation turns into teachers, that people will see computers as a tool for creative activity.
[51:38.370 --> 51:40.390]  And you see kids doing it all the time.
[51:40.590 --> 51:44.390]  They're doing music, they're doing art, and they're doing chatting, and instant messaging, and all this stuff.
[51:45.670 --> 51:57.170]  So the younger set, and hopefully their teachers eventually, will see the computer as something that's really a means to expression, more than as a means to get tasks done.
[51:57.330 --> 51:58.190]  And that's going to happen.
[51:58.310 --> 52:02.850]  I mean, how many people use their computer now only as a word processor?
[52:03.610 --> 52:03.930]  Right?
[52:04.110 --> 52:07.250]  And that's what, really, they use... or only as a station to program or something.
[52:07.670 --> 52:16.010]  You know, we don't think of a computer as the thing that we use to write a document, as the thing that we use to, you know, write a program or something like that.
[52:16.130 --> 52:18.930]  We think of the computer as the thing that we use to do all kinds of stuff.
[52:18.930 --> 52:20.450]  So I'm optimistic.
[52:20.830 --> 52:22.550]  I mean, maybe false... I think falsely optimistic.
[52:22.990 --> 52:24.770]  At least a little bit falsely optimistic.
[52:25.090 --> 52:31.630]  But I'm optimistic that there is going to be a mindset change, especially if we see more people doing more creative things with computers.
[52:31.890 --> 52:37.430]  We get more computers that don't look like brick, ugly things, and look more like arty, fancy things.
[52:38.850 --> 52:43.970]  You know, of course, we always have fancier software that can do fascinating things like PowerPoint.
[52:45.210 --> 52:55.390]  Yeah, so I'll be a little bit falsely optimistic that certainly as the generations change, that perception of the computer will change as well.
[52:55.510 --> 52:56.550]  And it won't be quite as threatening.
[52:56.850 --> 53:03.810]  And so I hope that people are going to be actually using the computer to do some of that permitted thinking outside of the box.
[53:03.810 --> 53:09.750]  Like you get an art class or music class or something, in addition to the areas where you lock down.
[53:11.210 --> 53:13.750]  Okay, I'm going to have to wrap the session up for now.
[53:13.930 --> 53:14.970]  Thanks so much for coming.
[53:15.250 --> 53:17.590]  You saw my URL at the beginning.
[53:17.770 --> 53:21.010]  My email is newby@ils.unc.edu.
[53:21.050 --> 53:22.190]  Easy to find on the Internet.
[53:22.610 --> 53:26.750]  I value hearing from people, and I will get this up on the CPSR website.
[53:27.090 --> 53:31.970]  As I said, it's a multi-year effort, but I'm very passionate about this.
[53:31.970 --> 53:43.810]  I'm very, very concerned about the mentality of only being inside the box, being delivered at a younger and younger age to computer users.
[53:44.150 --> 53:45.390]  We don't want sheep.
[53:45.690 --> 53:48.710]  We don't want people... I mean, maybe there's a role for that, okay.
[53:48.950 --> 53:54.690]  But we don't want everyone that uses a computer only to be able to use that computer for what someone told them it's for.
[53:56.170 --> 53:59.390]  That's the end of innovation, if that were to happen.
[53:59.670 --> 54:07.210]  And that's, of course, also the further step towards ostracizing the hackers.
[54:07.650 --> 54:09.590]  So we don't want any of those things to happen.
[54:10.530 --> 54:13.070]  Okay, well, thanks for coming, and enjoy the rest of the conference.
[54:13.070 --> 54:13.190]  Thank you guys.