[PLUG] Internet addictions and technology

[Robert Munro]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

This probably belongs on Plug-talk, but I'll reply to you one time here.

I don't follow Plug-talk, btw. So if you want to reply please do so via
private email.

Truer words have never been written than "You can't legislate morality."

That also applies to trying to shut down those who profit from vices or
trying to censor the Internet as a whole, or even your own small corner
of it. The name "Portland" reveals that this has always been, and still
is, a seaport town. Think about that for a moment. If you read history,
you'll find that the term "Skid Road" was invented here when they were
still logging the West Hills, and only later it morphed into "Skid Row".

The stories about there having been tunnels beneath a few Old Town bars
that led directly to the waterfront are true. Many one-time loggers got
drunk downtown and woke up on a sailing voyage to Shanghai, China, thus
the term "Shanghaied". San Francisco was more flamboyant in its sinning
but Portland was perhaps just a little more businesslike, and discrete.

I won't go through the history, but suffice it to say that the Memorial
Coliseum was built over a red-light district that had flourished in the
Rose Quarter. Chinatown was once a nest of opium dens and Chinese clubs
mostly dedicated to gambling, and even the Lotus Cafe was at one time a
card club, a block away from the courthouse. Now it is just a lunchtime
cafe for lawyers, judges and juries, but as recently as the mid-1980s I
can recall that it was a dire dive where some drunk shot the bartender,
dead, .357 in the chest just for having told the guy to leave, earlier.

Then there was Bill's Gold Coin, the hooker bar just on the other side
of the facing block from Jakes restaurant, where there's a gay bar now,
or was the last time I looked. The upper floors were a gay 'bathhouse'.

Bud Clark was perhaps Portland's most honest and effective mayor in our
city's history, but consider that he got elected from running the Goose
Hollow Inn, which was a free for all venue for sex and drugs in the 70s
although he did close the place a bit early to encourage responsibility.

Bud Clark lost his first family to a drunk driver, but built the Goose,
so if you want to talk about society and morality you might look him up.

Neil Goldschmidt, on the other hand - Portland's golden boy of politics
and later Oregon Governor and US Secretary of Transportation - had been
fucking his underage neighbor girl while he was in office and continued
to do so for many years. You can sometimes run into him at Goose Hollow
but the woman died recently, a life ruined, and a very long awful story.

Goldschmidt's driver had an affair with his wife, but Bernie Giusto got
the job of Multnomah County Sheriff and he managed to hang on to it for
a long time. He was only forced to withdraw after much of this came out.

The fact is that in Oregon we live on the edge of a corrupt and failing
military industrial empire that's distracting us proles with irrelevant
sex and sports and advertising the tacky consumer gadgets made in China
and sold at Wal-Mart, and it's up to us to maintain a sense of morality.

Every bar you might walk into in Portland has lottery video poker, that
inexorable tax on the innumerate who can't figure out that they'll lose
over time by playing. That the State runs this is exceptionally odious,
but it's a tax on stupidity so I guess the losers deserve the fleecing.

There are stripper bars all over town, "gentlemen's clubs" where you'll
be welcome as long as you keep buying drinks and tipping dancers. There
are also sex clubs, I've heard. You can buy drugs in any downtown club,
and that's not new. It has been more or less the case forever, I think.

And yet, you want to worry about the best way of filtering the Internet
for yourself and your subscribers? Wake up, Michael, we're in Portland!

I think you need to get out more, and perhaps read some of our history.

The bottom line is how you choose to live your life. Want to wank it to
a video? Go ahead. Got a special lady friend you'd like to save it for?
You can do that instead. It's up to you. No women in your life? They're
over 50% of the population, and unlike China, there are girls your age,
and most importantly, you do not need to be the censor for anyone else.

If you have people asking you to censor the Internet, tell them that is
up to them. As in, if you don't want to see it, don't look. That is the
case in real life, and it also applies on the Internet. It's up to them
to live their life and you should not let them put in on you, not ever,
not for business accounts nor most especially for people's home systems.

Just take care of yourself and what you do in your own life, and allow
other people your respectful space to let them take care of themselves.

Best wishes,
Robert

On 02/14/2011 02:01 AM, Michael C. Robinson <plug_1 at robinson-west.com>
wrote:
> 
> On a non technical note, how do other people deal with addictive
> Internet content whether it be: gambling, social media, or 
> pornographic web sites (which includes hulu depending on what you
> watch).  You can let yourself go of course, but if surfing certain 
> types of content is a fireable offense at work, why get in the 
> habit at home?  The Internet is not policed at all or pornography
> wouldn't be freely available to anyone.  There is such a thing as
> decency which broadcast television had mostly observed until recently,
> the Grammy's tonight being a prime example.
> 
> Everything from inappropriately revealing costuming to sexually
> suggestive dancing to inappropriate host comments.  The comments ranged
> from I had sex with the next performer to I was smoking Salvia with
> Miley Cyrus back stage.  The cavalier attitude about sex displayed at
> the Grammy awards is disturbing and in stark contrast with what is
> expected of people in the real world.  Maybe in our society there is a
> push to treat sex as a performance and a form of recreation, but
> sex is not a performance and leaving marriage out of "recreational sex"
> is wrong for so many reasons.  The way the Internet and the media are
> today, you would think that all Americans are cavalier about sex,
> marriage, and children.  I'm sure most of us realize that a majority of
> people follow a set of moral principles that demand a very different
> attitude.
> 
> Just because someone has values, addiction is still a very real danger.
> The difference today verses 31 years ago is that the Internet delivers
> addictive content at blazingly fast speeds to people in potentially
> private spaces.  Add that many Americans live in rural areas or
> otherwise find themselves socially isolated in our fast paced modern
> world.  The social dynamic that could help alleviate the addiction
> danger is gone.  Humans are social creatures, we do better among others
> with similar values than we do alone.  Addicts are usually alone,
> unseen, and they usually try to hide their problem.  Internet in the
> home can be a disaster.
> 
> Thing is, a true addict sooner or later will slip up and the addiction
> will affect their real life.  This is as true of alcoholism as it is of
> a porn or gambling addiction.  Getting fired is just the tip of the
> iceberg, people end up divorcing and there are other potentially worse
> consequences for addicts.  I realize the home is treated as the castle
> where censorship should stop at the door, but the problem with that is
> that the Internet takes you out of your house and potentially nothing
> you do on it is private.  One wants to be able to follow a value system
> whether that means stay behind a filter or whatever that may entail.
> Addiction topples a person's value system.  Technical barriers to keep
> the honest honest are not solutions to the addiction problem, but these
> barriers can help people who are trying to do the right thing anyways.
> So much energy has been focused on giving people access to the Net that
> I fear little has been done to address what people have access to and
> how this will affect both individuals and entire communities.
> 
> Linux is a positive outcome of the Internet, but increased proliferation
> of pornography is not.  Fighting a billion dollar industry by saying I'm
> just going to stay away, I'm just going to leave the filter on.  I won't
> look at pictures that are likely to turn me on...  The danger is, you
> likely do turn the filter off sooner or later regardless of your values.
> The Internet needs to be policed and the sex trade ought to be called
> what it is.  Portland residents should be ashamed that there are so many
> "Adult" businesses that promote sexual activity.  The problem should be
> tackled from the supply side.  Tackling the problem yourself by saying I
> won't be a consumer of this, curiosity can trip you up.  The supply of
> pornography and other addictive Internet deliverable materials needs to
> be reduced.  Yes one can say, "I won't go back for more of this
> material," and possibly succeed.  What about people who can't accomplish
> this or who haven't accomplished this yet?
> 
> Technical solutions like use 802.1x authentication combined with having
> another person administrate the actual Internet connection, these
> solutions reinforce a person's value system and complement it.  As far
> as societal decay in general and the Internet specifically, this is a
> broad discussion that needs to happen sooner or later in communities
> around the world.  I hope, sooner than later, that law enforcement 
> will crack down on the sex trade and other Internet enhanced criminal
> activity.  There should be support groups for people who have to use the
> Internet on a daily basis who struggle with some of the things the
> Internet offers.  If there aren't, maybe this community should form
> some.  While were at, we should tell the media that we are tired of
> shows like Two and a Half Men and other violent shows.  The less good
> clean wholesome entertainment there is, the more people will fall back
> on technical approaches to keeping the unhealthy stuff out of their
> lives.  The battle can't be won without community effort and attacking
> the supply side.
> 
> 

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAk1aNU4ACgkQ+qYMIUkNJCyCiwCfeIDo9jVrkTH6KewX9Yddb0g1
EkoAoKv4e07Lju62ZtJThb3qmULG0D6v
=V8Sk
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----