Are You Experienced?

Have you ever heard of Rod Blagojevich? He's the governor who's trying to criminalize the sale of violent and sexually explicit videogames to minors in the state of Illinois. A noble cause, no doubt, but unfortunately a noble cause which makes it abundantly clear that we have a serious digital divide in this country today. And by digital divide I am not talking about the economic gap between the haves and the have-nots, but rather the divide between the clued and the totally clueless.

Not that it's a bad idea, mind you. I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that kids should decide what is and what isn't appropriate for them to have. It's just that the governor seems to belong to that select and rapidly aging population of people (or should I say generation of people?) who just don't seem to realize how much the world has changed and how far the technology has come. Digital content, all those little bits and bytes that encode so much of the data that people consume these days, doesn't know anything about state boundaries, or municipal boundaries, or county lines or even national borders. Digital content just flows naturally. It courses over the internet, nests cozily on CD's and flash memory cards, and is quite happy to make its home without regard to age, race or religion on any computer that happens to offer a friendly operating environment.

Doesn't the governor realize that? Don't any of the legislators or any of the corresp0ndents who reported this story realize that you can't ban bits? I wonder, for instance, if the governor has ever been to suprnova.org and downloaded a bitTorrent file? I'd say the odds are pretty slim. The odds that anyone in the Illinois state legislature has ever installed the eDonkey client and done any p-to-p sharing are equally slim, and the odds are positively microscopic that Brian or Dan or Peter (or Jim or Margaret or Ray, for that matter) has ever traded any warez over IRC or browsed through a Usenet group looking to violate someone's copyright.

Too bad, because if they had then they would realize the files they seek to ban are readily available through a number of different channels. Just go to suprnova.org and look through the hundreds and hundreds of games, movies, cd's and more that are listed in its directories. It's almost funny because if the governor did happen to browse through the listings he might be shocked to find that a cracked version of 'JFK Reloaded' (the game he says inspired him to institute this ban) is there for the taking by any 10, 11 or 12 year old curious enough to make the effort to download it. No parental consent or even money necessary.

What this legislation really shows, I think, is the enormous knowledge gap that exists between ignorant, serious-minded adults and their digitally savvy kids. You just have to wonder how any group of people can ever hope to be effective role models and leaders on technology when they are so far behind. I mean it's not like Napster or Morpheus or any of the other digital avenues that have opened up are anything new.

No, to be so ignorant you have to want to be ignorant. You have to want to bury your head in the sand and only be dimly aware of the changes that are happening all around you. And I can understand that, in a way. I know I tend to be a little old-fashioned myself. Sure, River City was backward and ignorant, but it was also wholesome and pure and the type of place where a fella' and his sweetheart could go down by the footbridge on a hot summer night for a little moonlight romance. But we all know that if the world was ever like that, it's not like that anymore.

So what do we do about these videogames? Well I'll tell ya', I don't know. I used to be a very avid videogamer in my younger days and all I can say is that the games have changed a lot since then. Now all I can do is look down from my ivory tower on these misshapen youth and wonder, just like everybody else, what the hell is going on. I do have this theory, though, and that is that there is just too much media these days. Too much TV, too much radio, too much videogaming - and these kids are getting pretty bored with it all. As a result the media moguls and content providers find that they have to go further and further over the edge to get the same response. I think they call it 'Extreme' and you see it in everything from 'Extreme Sports' to 'Extreme' TV to 'Extreme' Videogames.

How else are you going to be heard over all the noise?

What I do know is that a ban will never work. Everyone likes to say that better parenting is the answer, but how can that happen when the parents are just as clueless as the politicians and the nightly newscasters and all the others who seem so hopelessly out of step. No, I think first you've got to understand what you're dealing with, then you've got to decide if it's really a problem, and only when you've done all that can you begin to think about an answer. In the meantime, I'd say there are some people out there who have some catching up to do.

And that means you, Governor Blagojevich.