The concept of the Electronic Nanny came to me, like so many other good things, via email, from James Bountrogiannis of Canada.
Email is a daily miracle.
It sends an unending supply of criticism, praise, friendship, enthusiasm, and ideas pouring into my basement, broadening my view in every conceivable way, teaching me to become less arrogant as a journalist, more knowledgeable about the things I've written, more tolerant of the many people who take the trouble to enthusiastically disagree with me, more aware of how many genuine and valid points of view there are in the world.
Via email, I battle religious fundamentalists about morality, get secret messages from teachers in China, commiserate with other yellow Lab owners about the fact that my proud hunting dog is now a vegetarian due to digestive problems, and get scolded by deans and professors for bad grammar and flawed logic.
"Check this out," followed by a URL, has become a universal greeting on the Web, a sacred offering of a new destination, often a new community or idea.
Last week, I visited with teenagers gathering to fight censorship and pioneering cartoonists doing online graphics. I visited a Web site devoted to X-Files FBI agent Dana Scully's recovery from cancer. People ask me all the time if it's hard to write a Net column three times a week. The truth is, there isn't enough time or space available to relate a fraction of what I see and hear.
This appreciation of email has caused several newspaper and magazine writers to describe me recently, in articles about the Web, as a Net "enthusiast," much in the same way somebody might be described as a garden fanatic or golf nut.
I sense they expect more objective detachment from me, but I even love junk email. How else could you be invited to subscribe to the Mutants' Web page or solicited to buy videos of sinkholes devouring houses or sperm whales mating?
"I'm a descendant of Thomas Paine's wife," emailed Lady Jane from Portsmouth, England, two weeks ago. "It's come to my attention that you have written about him. Please ring me up when you're next in England and we can chat about it. I have what I believe is a pair of his shoes if you want to see them."
Brian, a member of Peacefire.org, the free-speech Web site started by teenagers that was the subject of one of my recent rants, emailed me that he had photographed the school bully peeing in the middle of the football field and put it up on a special Web page.
"You drive me crazy," wrote one graduate student recently. "You're unpredictable and erratic. I can't figure out how your mind works. Sometimes I wonder if it does work. You would never get into a good graduate program or survive there. I write hoping you can learn some discipline in your thinking and writing. But here we are. I'm reading what you write and I'm writing you about it. That says something."
It's only by happenstance, of course, that I write the column, instead of the many inventive and intelligent people who email me.
So the fact that it was an email correspondent who suggested the Electronic Nanny was no surprise, and I kicked myself for not having come up with it on my own.
A puzzled James B. wrote me last week after a series on censorship: "In trying to seek a 'sane' balance between (ugh!) censorship and (hoorah!) free speech I'm often struck with difficult choices (to block or not to block)."
"I am convinced," he wrote, "that every parent should invest in an Internet-ready computer for their kids. If they're still confused by all this bunk about garbage on the Web, let them buy an electronic nanny."
This was a brilliant idea. Where blocking software failed, this new idea would succeed. The Electronic Nanny could be distributed on CD-ROM and do the job we've been begging parents to do all year - surf the Net with kids and talk to them about what they see.
The Electronic Nanny would never lament that it was too busy at work to have time to monitor Johnny or Jane's Web browsing, or to take responsibility for their moral upbringing.
If too many violent images were popping up, the Electronic Nanny wouldn't block them, but instead would talk to Johnny about them. Does he know these aren't real? That real violence isn't fun? If he spots liquor or tobacco ads, the Electronic Nanny could run up a video of diseased lungs and livers.
Does Jane grasp that advertising and stories are different things? The Electronic Nanny could develop a profile of Johnny (he's a good sharer, but he needs to curb his temper and socialize more) and make sure that Jane got appropriate exposure to science, math, and technology.
At night, after Jane and Johnny are asleep, the Electronic Nanny could spend some time with parents, too. Teach them how to browse the Web, visit a Usenet group.
The Electronic Nanny would be programmed to take extra care with boomer moms and dads, and teach them the truth about new media and popular culture. Maybe calm them down a bit. Show them that their kids are learning to read after all, and would get into good schools and have happy lives, even though they watched Beavis & Butt-head from time to time, checked out the newest video from MTV, and went online every day after school to yak with their friends.
That's software we could use.
