Internet Love video for Huh-Uh (my band) for the Northwest Film Forum 24-hour film challenge 2006. By Hailey Gaiser, Jeremy Mather, Tonjia Rhen.
My observations and responses to this crazy world; in color, text, and line
Friday, April 10, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
I would like to talk about cellular phones.
I watched a news story the other day about 'sexting' which is, as you can probably guess, sending sexy texts. Though not really texts at all, but picture messages. I mean, with a new communication technology, of course sex will find it's way in there. We are sexual beings, starting at our conception. Each of us started with an orgasm (in exception with those 'science babies'). I think this is perfectly normal. And it is perfectly normal for children and teens, in exploring their own sexualities (with each-other, mind you), to explore their budding sexualities through the most accessible and least-controlled contemporary communication technology: cell phones.
Kids have cell phones these days as early as age nine, because parents want to be able to get ahold of their kids. But in that, these children are set free with this device that can text and take pictures and send pictures, but they're not given any tools with which to be safe, smart, and polite with them. Kids text during class, at the dinner table, late at night, early in the morning. My 17-year-old cousin must send over a hundred texts a day (when I've visited her family, i hear the text alert every couple minutes for the entirety of the time i'm in the vicinity, and I assume it carries on after I'm not.)
What upset me about this story is that these children are being charged with CHILD PORNOGRAPHY! An 18 year-old boy had a naked picture of his 16 year-old girlfriend (they were high-school sweethearts and had been together for two years) and he got caught with this image in his phone (how he was 'caught' was unclear to me). He is was charged as a child pornographer, expelled from school, had his computer taken away, and is now a convicted sex offender. His life is now ruined because he was not taught how to be smart with his celly. This is a great tragedy.
There was another girl who had been caught with a naked image that she had taken of herself when she was twelve, which was about three years prior, and was being charged with child pornography. These children are made to think that they're doing something wrong, that they are bad people making bad, dirty, evil mistakes, when they're only going through their own processes of self-discovery with the tools that are being given to them.
Why is it in western civilization, when there is a problem or an ailment or frustration...only the symptoms are treated. And when you only treat the symptoms, the problem stays, it just treats the surface of the problem.
I don't think the problem is that children are exploring their sexuality with technology. It has always happened and will always happen. It just so happens that the newer technologies are more expansive, and it is possible for these images that are taken in the privacy of ones own home, can be hacked and intercepted by anyone with the skills, world-wide. And children are not taught cell-phone safety or etiquette.
This is an exact repeat of the mistake of teaching abstinence in schools, which lead to: AIDS. After AIDS, the topic of sex-education could no longer be ignored. All because of some conservative, religious values being placed from one generation onto another, when all the rules had changed and those values were no longer relevant. It is the responsibility of the parents and the educators to EDUCATE and help move the next generation into the future with the guidance of information.
With all the intelligence that humans possess and the extreme abilities that they are discovering, why is it that the prior generations are still fucking up the new ones with their archaic values, stubbornness, and vanity? And then each generation spends their life trying to get over all of the issues that were being piled on them by their mentors and educators during the most formative years of their life? And any educator that tries to step in and be honest about reality with children ends up being banished from the education system. It all seems really fucking backwards to me.
All i'm saying is: rather than ignore, educate.
Hailey
I watched a news story the other day about 'sexting' which is, as you can probably guess, sending sexy texts. Though not really texts at all, but picture messages. I mean, with a new communication technology, of course sex will find it's way in there. We are sexual beings, starting at our conception. Each of us started with an orgasm (in exception with those 'science babies'). I think this is perfectly normal. And it is perfectly normal for children and teens, in exploring their own sexualities (with each-other, mind you), to explore their budding sexualities through the most accessible and least-controlled contemporary communication technology: cell phones.
Kids have cell phones these days as early as age nine, because parents want to be able to get ahold of their kids. But in that, these children are set free with this device that can text and take pictures and send pictures, but they're not given any tools with which to be safe, smart, and polite with them. Kids text during class, at the dinner table, late at night, early in the morning. My 17-year-old cousin must send over a hundred texts a day (when I've visited her family, i hear the text alert every couple minutes for the entirety of the time i'm in the vicinity, and I assume it carries on after I'm not.)
What upset me about this story is that these children are being charged with CHILD PORNOGRAPHY! An 18 year-old boy had a naked picture of his 16 year-old girlfriend (they were high-school sweethearts and had been together for two years) and he got caught with this image in his phone (how he was 'caught' was unclear to me). He is was charged as a child pornographer, expelled from school, had his computer taken away, and is now a convicted sex offender. His life is now ruined because he was not taught how to be smart with his celly. This is a great tragedy.
There was another girl who had been caught with a naked image that she had taken of herself when she was twelve, which was about three years prior, and was being charged with child pornography. These children are made to think that they're doing something wrong, that they are bad people making bad, dirty, evil mistakes, when they're only going through their own processes of self-discovery with the tools that are being given to them.
Why is it in western civilization, when there is a problem or an ailment or frustration...only the symptoms are treated. And when you only treat the symptoms, the problem stays, it just treats the surface of the problem.
I don't think the problem is that children are exploring their sexuality with technology. It has always happened and will always happen. It just so happens that the newer technologies are more expansive, and it is possible for these images that are taken in the privacy of ones own home, can be hacked and intercepted by anyone with the skills, world-wide. And children are not taught cell-phone safety or etiquette.
This is an exact repeat of the mistake of teaching abstinence in schools, which lead to: AIDS. After AIDS, the topic of sex-education could no longer be ignored. All because of some conservative, religious values being placed from one generation onto another, when all the rules had changed and those values were no longer relevant. It is the responsibility of the parents and the educators to EDUCATE and help move the next generation into the future with the guidance of information.
With all the intelligence that humans possess and the extreme abilities that they are discovering, why is it that the prior generations are still fucking up the new ones with their archaic values, stubbornness, and vanity? And then each generation spends their life trying to get over all of the issues that were being piled on them by their mentors and educators during the most formative years of their life? And any educator that tries to step in and be honest about reality with children ends up being banished from the education system. It all seems really fucking backwards to me.
All i'm saying is: rather than ignore, educate.
Hailey
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