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JoCo in Noho

This evening was "Curriculum Night" at the Elementary School. I made a point of meeting with the technology specialist and explaining carefully what Muppyville was to her -- she was enthusiastic. Although Charlie had spoken with the school folks during the first week of classes, they still hadn't unblocked the URL to Muppyville. The school system uses one of the fascist censorware systems that prevent students from accessing any page on the internet that aren't among those deemed "worthy" by the companies that rate these pages. Muppyville is "unrated" -- and therefore needs to be blocked. We live in a very strange world. Although they had told Charlie, they would get Muppyville unblocked, they didn't. We'll see if anything happens now. In any event, I've created logins for Daniel's teacher and the technology specialist. Hopefully, they'll get it unblocked and Charlie can set up Muppyville logins for the rest of the kids. My kids haven't asked me about trying to route around the school's moronic blocking software -- probably because at home (and elsewhere) they don't have to deal with the idiotfilters.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've decided that I really need to write a book about how the Internet represents a kind of freedom that is only too scarce in our society -- and to envision: what the rest of our life looks like by comparison and (2) what our life could look like if it were modeled on the same principles. I think this is something that I know something about, feel strongly about, and recognize that the rest of the world mostly doesn't get. I don't know if I can sell a book about this, but if we can get the rest of the world to realize that: if email is free then textmessages should be free too; if you can install programs on your computer, you should be able to on your phone too; if you can walk on the sidewalk for free, then you should be able to use the wireless for free too -- I think the examples could go on and on -- enough to make a whole book. We'll see.