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“The Race to the Bottom”
By Jeremy | January 2, 2007
Popular Web sites like YouTube and MySpace have hired the equivalent of school hallway monitors to police what visitors to their sites can see and do by cracking down on piracy and depictions of nudity and violence. So where do the young thrill-seekers go? Increasingly, to new Web sites like Stickam.com, which is building a business by going where others fear to tread: into the realm of unfiltered live broadcasts from Web cameras. The site combines elements of more popular sites, but with a twist. In addition to designing their own pages and uploading video clips, its users broadcast live video of themselves and conduct face-to-face video chats with other users, often from their bedrooms and all without monitoring by any of Stickam’s 35 employees.... The larger Internet companies have come under increasing pressure to make their sites safer for children and friendlier to copyright holders, so start-ups like Stickam are pursuing their own slices of the market, often at the price of taste, ethics and perhaps even child safety. “Letting people do whatever they want is one way for these sites to differentiate themselves,†said Josh Bernoff, a Forrester Research analyst. “It is the race to the bottom.†... [S]ince the company does not verify a user’s age, and because users’ broadcasts are live, even the firm’s chief executive, Hideki Kishioka, concedes those rules are unenforceable. The company is “relying on users to monitor each other,†he said.HT: Jamie Puente The challenges of ministering in a Myspace world are tame compared to a world that's unabashedly "racing to the bottom." Everytime I hear that phrase, I'm reminded of the picture Paul paints of life at the bottom in Romans 1:
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.At the same time, it's comforting that against this backdrop of depravity Paul also reminds us of God's unrelenting faithfulness (Romans 3), abounding grace (Romans 5), victorious life (Romans 8), everlasting purpose (Romans 12), and compassion for the weak (Romans 14-15). Even as we run a different kind of race, it's imperative for us to stay engaged without growing weary and losing heart.
Topics: internet, myspace, technology, youth, youth ministry | 1 Comment »
September 30th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
[...] So Much? And Other Christ Like Musings on Myspace + Merchants of Cool (PBS Frontline Documentary) + Websites Without Rules (New York Times, January 2, 2007) + Too Wired for their Own Good? (Time magazine cover, March 27, [...]