The Social Networking Girl

While I appreciate your obvious concern for the well-being of the children of America, and I’m certain that running for re-election in your suburban Chicago district must put an extreme amount of pressure on you, allow me to point out that your newfound disdain for Second Life is a bit puzzling.

I do realize that your campaign managers likely felt that taking a stance against a relatively new, exciting, immersive technology that allows for experiential learning and gives children the opportunity to explore and experience learning in new, creative, and engaging ways was a good idea to aid your re-election campaign. It’s good, sometimes, to be the person standing up and defending our children - pointing out the evils of technology and keeping them safe from all of the bad people on the internet. I would imagine that in your view, places of learning like schools and libraries would definitely not want to use these sorts of things. For all we know, children might learn to work together and solve problems and goodness knows we don’t want that, do we Representative Kirk.

I’m sure that all of the children who have used Second Life in libraries and schools would be really pleased to know that you no longer want that to be available to them. I’m sure that the children involved in programs all over the United States that are interacting with other students would agree that this is a terrible, scary place and they’ve just been waiting for a hero like you to come along and slam those doors of opportunity shut.

I am also intrigued by your comment that we should “take action to warn parents of the similar dangers and sexually explicit content found on Second Life.”. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, Representative Kirk so you may want to have a seat… there is sexually explicit content all over the internet. If you don’t want to see it, you don’t look at it. Shocking, I know. Maybe it’s best if we just cut off our children from the internet completely. We wouldn’t want them to see anything inappropriate and God forbid they might receive a spam email from someone rife with these aforementioned ‘dangers’.

In conclusion, Mark (I can call you Mark, I hope) while I can definitely appreciate the fact that you’re under a lot of stress and pressure in your re-election campaign and I’m SURE that you’re  proposing this legislation  out of the goodness of your heart and your inherent need to stand up and protect our children, but…. you’re way off base here.

I would be more than happy to meet you in Second Life and show you some of this explicit ‘dangerous’ content that you’re so focused on, but I’d also very much appreciate the time and opportunity to show you the incredible, amazing things being done in Second Life - many of which are from libraries and schools all over the world.

Sincerely,
Shannon

P.S. You should really not make such a big deal about this sort of legislation, you kind of look like a dork.