Let me welcome myself to my first blog. A step that may not be momentous to anyone else, but is a small step on hopefully a long and memorable journey.
I recently attended the annual TUANZconference with some of my work colleagues on a wet Auckland day. The day ranged from the dreadful to the very good. What has stuck with me most after a week’s reflection was the debate at the end of the day. We had viewed a You Tube video of a group of excited schoolboys in uniform exuberantly Krumping, obviously in a school ground. An impromptu gathering of boisterous, high-spirited males being rowdy and energetic. Instead of the debate being about the ethical dilemmas for society that social sites like You Tube have created, the debate degenerated into the shock and horror that many of the delegates felt at viewing the aggressive and exuberant behaviour of a group of twenty or so young males in school uniforms during a recess break. What struck me was the yawning gulf between today’s youth culture and the comfortable middle class views of the majority female audience. Even the leader of the debate couldn’t refrain from putting on his school administrator hat and expressing discomfort at the sight of boys in school uniforms displaying such noisy behaviour in a schoolyard. I wonder how many of my colleagues felt disquiet at an awful realisation and feeling of helplessness and futility at losing their all-powerful position as gatekeepers, vetting what they deem as either appropriate or inappropriate material. I think a realisation was sinking in that the purchasers of library books and school texts can no longer control what their students participate in on many social networking sites. Maybe at an ICT conference the debate should have been about ethical issues like an individuals rights to privacy, or protecting intellectual property rather than the lack of merit in Krumping as an art form.
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