Read Surfing.

Read Click.

By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 27 1997; Page B01
The Washington Post

A middle school student researching a report on the Earth's crust is likely to sit down to a World Wide Web-equipped terminal in a classroom, go to the Yahoo search engine, and type in some familiar geologic word such as "eruption." The search would bring up tons of valuable information about the geologic phenomenon. But the first clickable site in the list would be this: "Eruption -- muscular, hard, gay, naked men, bodybuilders, jocks, studs, athletes, all nude, all man to man sex. All presented in a manner designed to ensure your eruption."

Such is life on the double-edged Internet.

For several years now there has been a move by parents, educators and high-tech companies to get computers into the hands of students and to get those computers plugged in to the Internet. Suddenly, however, wiring the schools is provoking hesitance, or even resistance -- at least from some parents and educators.

At a recent school-sponsored coffee hour, parents of sixth-graders began talking about how they allocate telephone time and shepherd their children in shopping malls. But when someone mentioned the Internet, the tone of the meeting changed, and it became obvious that many parents are scared to death of the online life and its effect on their children. Even the middle-school principal who at the first of the year had encouraged families to get wired said that he was reconsidering his advice as he learned more about the seamy underbelly of the Internet.

Many of us are wrestling with the subject. On one hand, you want your kids to be given every advantage of contemporary culture; on the other, you're concerned that they're vulnerable to in-your-face nastiness. On another hand, you believe deeply in free speech and don't want the government deciding what's good for you or your children; on still another hand, you know that you can't monitor the screen all the time and your kid's teachers surely aren't going to monitor in-class online activities. And even if the teacher does watch over your kid's shoulder, who's to say that the teacher has the same values your family has, and soon you realize you've run out of hands.

Software designers are working overtime to provide technological assistance to families. At least four companies, Cyber Patrol, Cyber Sitter, Surfwatch and Net Nanny, offer "smut blocker" software that works in conjunction with your Web browser to filter out objectionable material. Some search engines have developed kid-oriented sections like Yahooligans. For instance, if you look for "eruption" there, you get a total of two clickable sites -- both about Mount St. Helens. More and more sites, such as Newsweek Parent's Guide to Children's Software, are providing Web-related information to parents. Several sites and online services offer rating systems and "safe havens" for kids.

Net Nanny president Gordon Ross said he is working with MIT's Platform for Internet Content Selection committee to develop a voluntary rating system for Web sites. "The fallacy of all this," he points out, "is each country has its own value set."

The fact is: Each family has its own set of values. And passing along those values, in the context of the Internet, seems to be the only solution.

"I think the most important thing is that parents go online with their children," said Sherry Turkle, a sociology professor at MIT. I spoke to her by phone. It was late afternoon and she and her 5-year-old daughter were sitting side-by-side at a Macintosh Performa, figuring out mazes on an Aladdin CD-ROM.

Parents, she said, must get more savvy about the digital world and be ready to answer questions their kids might have. And parents must accept the fact that when kids explore any new environment, they're liable to run into crude and kinky things.

"Like when you first take your kid to New York City," she said, "you have to be prepared for someone to expose themselves to your kids."

She favors the blockers and rating systems, but "I'm concerned that once we have all these rating things, parents will think they don't have to think anymore." PTAs, she said, should be holding introductory lessons to the Net rather than meetings about the Net's dark side.

"Children should have rules of the road," she added. "Never tell your name, address or telephone number to anyone on the Internet. Children should be anonymous on the Net."

Turkle said it's just like letting your child loose in a shopping mall. "We already teach our children appropriate behavior with strangers every day.

The answer to the problem is the same answer to nearly every kid problem -- time and energy. Maybe we should put the home computer in an open, family space -- not a kid's room or a distant basement cubicle. Maybe learning on the Internet should be a group activity, not a solo flight. Maybe we should treat the computer as a family appliance like a TV, not as a personal device like a Walkman.

In closing, I leave you with this thought from Sherry Turkle: "I have a tough love message for parents: Learn about it. It's in your kid's life."

Perturbations, pleasures and predicaments on the I-way.

Poetry in Motion

Although American poet Walt Whitman was certainly not anticipating the creation of the World Wide Web when he boasted "I sing the body electric," he probably would be delighted by William and Mary English professor Kenneth Price's effort to make his poetry hum across the Net.

This is Whitman in a new key. Filled with energy and full of complexity, Whitman's poetry on the Web benefits from a variety of electronic tools that highlight relationships, explain allusions, and compare variations among several versions of "Song of Myself," a poem continually revised and published in six versions during Whitman's lifetime.

A skeptical age jaded by the disappointing promises of the computer revolution demands evidence that this will work, and Price is ready to oblige. For example, electronic links between similar passages can help readers hop from place to place in the poem and among the versions of the poem to note similarities, to identify contrasts in theme or style, and to use easily understood lines to explain the more obscure. "Hypertext encourages lively, even aggressive reading because it calls for active participation," says Price.

What would Whitman think of all this?

Price cites an open letter Whitman penned to Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1856. Whitman was excited that the vast majority of then-state-of-the-art steam-driven presses were in the United States, and remarked on the plethora of bookstores, public libraries and newspapers in the republic.

" . . . All are prophetic. . . . What a progress popular reading has made in fifty years! What a progress fifty years hence!" Whitman wrote.

-- William Walker
wtwal2@facstaff.wm.edu

GETTING THERE: The Walt Whitman Hypertext Archive is at http://www.wm.edu/CAS/english/whitman/

Click
By Rob Pegoraro

Thursday, February 27 1997; Page B05
The Washington Post

Silly us. We almost let National Snack Food Month slip by without mentioning the site of those stalwarts of the MSG-industrial complex, the Snack Food Association. While there are a great many trade-assocation sites littering the Web around Washington, few are as self-consciously absurd as this collection of pop culture nuggets and snack-food industry trivia. Aesthetically, the snax.com site's a mixed bag; the puns are at best, cringe-inducing; at worst, likely to make me drop my support for the First Amendment. But some of the "dip o' the day" recipes sure do look yummy, and the "guess the snax" contest, in which you're invited to identify snack foods from the sounds of their crunch, makes quite the contribution to Web multimedia.

-Rob Pegoraro
rob@twp.com

EDITOR'S NOTE: To go to this site, open the following link in a new browser window. To do this on a PC, click it with your right mouse button and choose "Open in New Window." (On a Macintosh, click and hold for several seconds, then choose the same option.) When you are finished visiting the site, close the window. If you don't do this, you will not be able to return to this page.

http://www.snax.com