On Fearmongering and the Internet

Sometimes, I can’t tell whether Senator “Series of Tubes” Stevens (R-AK) is a political animal preying on people’s worst fears about the Web or just a doddering old fool whose Senate tenure has outlived his ability to understand and respect change.

Either way, his latest call to ban Wikipedia and other interactive Web tools from institutions that receive Federal funding (think libraries, schools, etc.) really pisses me off.

Robert Scoble said it best today:

Hint to Ted: our society should be looking to give our kids MORE access to knowledge, not less. The trick is in giving kids skills to separate the wheat from the chaff. Not trying to remove the whole kaboodle.

We give kids sex ed in health classes because we don’t want them getting pregnant or diseased due to bad decision making and poor information. Maybe it’s high time that kids were taught about online safety during their computer classes. After all, not all parents are Web-savvy enough to give their kids the best and most accurate information about how predators leverage online technologies to search for prey. It’s a good thing for them to be learning in school.

A question for all you lawyers out there: Given the digital divide in America, couldn’t banning blogs/wikis/social networks from public libraries and schools create such a disparity in freedom of speech that Stevens’ legislation could be unconstitutional?