Wednesday, March 11, 2015

First Look at the Internet

Yesterday a man came in to get a lieberry card and asked for help using the public computers.

I don't think he'd ever surfed the web before, because I explained to him about how to scroll to the tops and bottoms of web pages and how to use a search engine, and other things people younger than he tend to know, like pressing Enter when he was finished typing something.

He searched around for awhile and then I noticed that he turned off the computer quickly and then came to check with me.  Apparently he had seen something that he considered might be borderline inappropriate, and he was genuinely concerned that the police might be looking for him, although he was glad that what he saw was just words, and not any inappropriate pictures.

I had to reassure him several times that by leaving the web page immediately he had done the right thing.

I couldn't help thinking how much better off we would all be if we actually thought that the things that we watch mattered enough to pay attention to them and if we all watched what we watch and started to draw the line closer to where it ought to be.

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