Making the Internet better
Oct. 12th, 2008 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
So if you're an old fart who's been using the internet since before the web, there are times when you bemoan the fact that it's been made available to everyone. It's not that information shouldn't be available to the widest array of people, but most of them are idiots or assholes. And it's not that there weren't idiots or assholes on the Internet when it was mostly a military/science/education resource (your humble scribe here accepts the accolades of the peanut gallery).
But Google may have solved this issue. Their new Gmail Goggles feature forces you to answer a question before sending email. The difficulty can be adjusted based on time, recipient and the like.
I believe that if this system were expanded to act as a gatekeeper system for internet access as a whole, we might not only raise the collective intellect, but perhaps make it slightly more thoughtful and polite.
later
Tom
So if you're an old fart who's been using the internet since before the web, there are times when you bemoan the fact that it's been made available to everyone. It's not that information shouldn't be available to the widest array of people, but most of them are idiots or assholes. And it's not that there weren't idiots or assholes on the Internet when it was mostly a military/science/education resource (your humble scribe here accepts the accolades of the peanut gallery).
But Google may have solved this issue. Their new Gmail Goggles feature forces you to answer a question before sending email. The difficulty can be adjusted based on time, recipient and the like.
I believe that if this system were expanded to act as a gatekeeper system for internet access as a whole, we might not only raise the collective intellect, but perhaps make it slightly more thoughtful and polite.
later
Tom
