Don't They Want To Know What SOPA Is?

In case you haven't heard, some pretty big websites will be shutting down for 12 hours today in protest of a bill that some out of touch lawmakers are trying to get passed. The bill is called SOPA and that stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act. And while online piracy is bad, SOPA is even worse. Basically, SOPA would make it criminal to have any copyrighted material (and the definition of 'material' is so broad that it applies to just about anything and everything) on any website. Think about that. That's impossible to work around if you're a website. And really, it wouldn't exactly stop piracy. (The bill itself seems to have little indication that whoever wrote it has ever used the Internet or understands what piracy actually is.) This blog would cease to exist because of all of the pictures that I use with neither permission, nor malice. The implication of SOPA is that so many websites would cease to exist because of this law. Thus, several websites are going dark today to not only protest, but to also raise awareness of what this law could potentially do. But shockingly enough, people aren't quite understanding that this isn't a personal attack upon them.


Wikipedia is one of the major sites that will be dark today. Now, I don't know about you, but if I found out that a certain website that I frequented was unavailable in protest of some sort of new law that might happen, I'm pretty sure that I'd find out what the heck is going on. (And actually, one of my favorite websites, Reddit, is dark today in protest of SOPA. I imagine that today could end up being quite productive once I stop twitching from withdrawals..) But that doesn't seem to be the case with Wikipedia. No, people don't seem all that interested in why. Shocking, I know. All people seem to be interested in is (brace yourself) themselves. The big picture appears to be non-existent for a lot of folks.

I say that because I've been perusing the tweets that have gone out in regard to the darkness of Wikipedia. What I've learned is disconcerting at best and hypothesis affirming at worst. (That hypothesis being that we're doomed. OK, maybe that's not so much a hypothesis as it is something that I see society inching a little closer to every single day. It's still bad.) Let's look at some tweets and see if you notice the one thing that is glaringly missing from all of them.

By the way, I wish that I could take credit for compiling all of these lovely tweets, but alas, I cannot. I found them in the Twitter feed of a (I'm sure) lovely one Katie Notopoulos. She seems like a hoot. But I'm simply basing that on her tweet that read "fight SOPA; send your congressman a d**kpic". (And by the way, under SOPA, neither Katie, nor I would be able to be putting any of this stuff on the Internet. So there's that. But I digress. Where was I? Oh, right. She's funny and she retweeted the following. Behold!







First of all, I can only hope that some of these people were tweeting these sentiments in an ironic fashion. Second, are they aware that Wikipedia, while a lovely source of information, is edited by regular people and can be changed at any given moment to say whatever you want it to say until someone else notices that Gary Oldman really isn't a giraffe or that Snoop Dogg's "Gin & Juice" is a "masterpiece" and then edits it to be more factual? I didn't even know that Wikipedia was being accepted by teachers/professors as a citable source. I'm not saying that there isn't great information on Wikipedia. There is. I'm just saying that it can't always be trusted to be correct. (I'm also saying that I may or may not have participated at one time in the altering of some Wikipedia entries in order to make them more humorous and to reflect my incredible disdain for people who may or may not be Gloria Allred. That's all.)

But did you notice that not one of these Wikipedia dependent individuals didn't even question what in the world SOPA is? They think that Wikipedia shutting down for twelve hours is a problem? Are they aware that if SOPA was to pass that Wikipedia would likely be shut down for good? Why isn't anyone asking what SOPA is? Why isn't anyone asking why Wikipedia will be shut down? Man, how I wish that Facebook would do something like this. Could you imagine? The country would collectively wet itself if it couldn't get on Facebook for an entire day. (And let me tell you that if SOPA were to pass, Facebook would need to be shut down as well.) And people would ask what is up if Facebook went dark.

Today might be my most productive day ever without some of my favorite websites to mess around on and waste an extraordinary amount of time on. I might even go outside. I hear that's nice.

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Just a Twitter Away From an Education

From the 'What could possibly go wrong?' department, we have a story from the folks across the pond at The Guardian which tells us that school children will no longer have to study the Victorians or World War II in a proposal under which the primary school curriculum will be overhauled. Ok, then. I can see not studying the Victorians, perhaps. But that's really based on the fact that I don't know who the Victorians are and I turned out OK. (Not great, but who did?) But not studying World War II seems like a mistake (though I suppose that watching a few Tom Hanks or Matt Damon movies about World War II might suffice enough to get you through just about anything except for Jeopardy! and World War III). But what really seems like a mistake is for the kids to study Twitter and Wikipedia instead. Wait. What?

Are you kidding me? Twitter and Wikipedia? They're hardly substitutes for World War II. (Again, not knowing much about the Victorians, it's really hard to compare.) But according to the proposed curriculum, schools will be able to "...strip away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11" in order to "allow schools greater flexibility in what they teach." Greater flexibility? I'd say. To go from teaching something useful and factual (which Wikipedia is not always) to teaching crap seems like the ultimate in flexibility (as long as you're not counting Pamela Anderson, because I've seen that video of her and Tommy Lee and she is definitely the epitome of flexibility).

This new curriculum was created by a one Sir Jim Rose who is the former Ofsted chief (Ofsted = OFfice for STandards in EDucation). He wants to take the 13 current "subject areas" and whittle them down to a concise 6 "learning areas". So, instead of "things you need to know" I guess they'll be taught "there are things in here that you need to know". Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?

These are the basics of some of the "learning areas". Try not to scream.

• They will become "familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication " as well as becoming fluent in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learning how to use a "spellchecker alongside how to spell".
  

I can't do it. I can't make it to the end of this list without commenting. Learn how to use a spellchecker? Are you kidding me? Um, Control-S. Do I graduate? With honors?

• "...be able to place historical events within a chronology; to place the periods, events and changes they have studied within a chronological framework, and to understand some of the links between them."
  

OK, so first there was the Internet. Then bloggers or Wikipedia. I don't know which one figured out that they could just make up crap and have people believe it, no questions asked, first. Then came the podcast, because what's better than making up crap and writing it down than making up crap and talking about it? And finally, Twitter, where you can take all you've made up and broadcast it for the world to see all the live long day.

• Then there's the stuff about "...children's health, diet and physical activity, as well as their relationships with family and friends. They will be taught about peer pressure, how to deal with bullying and how to negotiate in their relationships."

How to negotiate? Guys learn that one sooner than girls. ("C'mon, baby. I'll tell you I love you if you have sex with me.") But girls do catch on. ("If you'll pay me the amount of alimony I'm asking for and give me the house and give me the car, I might think about sleeping with you again during this lifetime.")

• I found this one to be odd: "Less emphasis on the use of calculators than in the current curriculum." (OK, so they'll be sending in their English assignments that they researched on Wikipedia in 140 characters or less via Twitter and they'll be using their trusty abacus for math homework and carving their answers into a rock.)

This move "away from education" is perplexing to me. There are enough idiots out there who (technically) have been educated with a real curriculum. Can you imagine the dough heads that say, Flori-duh, for example, could churn out with a schedule like this? Look, I'm all for research skills and effective communication, but why Wikipedia? If you want to instill some web-based knowledge in their unmolded little brains, what say you start with Google? If you know how to use Google in the most effective and efficient way possible, you're going to be able to kick Wikipedia's ass with the (accurate) information that you'll be able to find. This plan does not thrill me and I'm a bit worried about the education system in general over there. (I'm also a bit worried that something like this will begin to take hold over here in the US. Sadly however, in some schools, teaching crap would be better than what they're currently teaching, which is nothing.)

It would seem that part of the rationale is that kids know about Wikipedia and Twitter and they don't know about World War II, so it's better to teach them about something they know. I thought the whole point of "teaching" something was so that people who didn't know about the subject would learn about it? But now, if they don't know about something then they are going to not be interested in learning about it at all? That seems...what's the word...oh yeah, effing ridiculous. (So it's two words. I misplaced my abacus when I was Twittering.) I hope that someone mentions this to Sir Jim Rose, but I don't know if they will because he's pretty darned scary looking over there. Yipes.

The article in The Guardian states that the "...reforms requiring schoolchildren to study Twitter and blogs would not apply in Wales. The changes would affect primary schools in England only." So there you have it. If you live in England, get your kids into school in Wales. You know, while I'm really curious as to how this is going to turn out, I have a hard time getting excited about social experiments where the end result could be of great detriment to society. Put that in your pipe and Twitter it.

And while you're at it, feel free to follow me on Twitter. (Dear God, I can't believe I just said that.) You can click on the link in the Twitter section of the sidebar over there on the right, or you can just go to the Twitter website and follow me under my Twitter name (can't believe I just said that either) OpusP. If you don't know what in the hell Twitter is, you're not alone. I still don't think I know what it is. Happy tweeting.

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