The other day I was having a conversation about one of those moral panic issues — you know, things like binge drinking, drugs, emos etc. Anyway, I listened to the other person panicking for a while, nodding patiently, before I said (very tongue in cheek) “I blame the internet.” Only problem is that the other person didn’t think it was a joke and agreed entirely. You see, for many people civilisation as we know it began to crumble the moment pr0n started being transfered digitally over phone lines instead of on glossy paper in newsagents.

When my students are doing research assignments and I ask for their sources at least half of them write down “Google” or “the internet”, causing me to go off on yet another angry rant about how Google and the tubes are tools to locate resources rather than resources in their own right. But I guess when supposedly intelligent adults can’t differentiate between tools, the content that tools communicate, or the intent and behaviour of the tools’ users, then why should I expect kids to tell the difference?

A classic example today from the allegedly intelligent adults responsible for running our country.

THE Rudd Government has admitted its high-speed broadband network could lead to an increase in cyber-bullying and other online crimes against children.

This shit moves me to tears of frustration. As Craig said to me in an SMS about this article this morning, “Maybe we should leave the tubes exactly the way they are? That will protect Teh Children.” On the one hand I know that the government wants to be seen to be tough on cyber-bullying and that necessitates a certain level of Today Tonight-style reactionary populism, but on the other hand it makes me despair when our government stoops to such anti-intellectual and anti-sense statements such as that one.

But then again, what choice does the government have when the media just adore whipping up the public into fits of moral panic about the internet and its emo-inducing ways? Every time there’s a case of bullying in schools that’s taken place (wholly or in part) on an internet website the popular media launches into its “the internet/ MySpace/ YouTube/ MSN/ mobile phones are evil” argument. But bullying has always been in schools, it will always (unfortunately) be in schools, and whether it takes place behind the bike sheds or on an internet chat room it’s the bullying that’s the problem and not the medium through which it occurs.

However, it’s important to note that the media, politicians and other organisations with influence don’t always run the tubes=evil line. Sometimes it’s just a total lack of understanding about what the internet is and what it does, resulting in a smack-your-head-it’s-so-stupid kind of reaction.

A couple of months ago when I was preparing to hold a school-based Australia 2020 summit to feed into the main summit I received a primer booklet from the government to help prepare kids for the topics being discussed. At the bottom of each section there was a list of resources to assist in lesson planning. Listed in each section were some books and government department websites, along with the words “blogs” and “wikis”. Not a list of specific blogs and wikis that had information relevent to the topic; just those two words because some clueless dipshit in the education ministry had some vague notion of Web2.0 and had heard that tha kidz like to use blogs.

In the lead up to last year’s election both major parties “embraced” so-called new media in an effort to connect with younger voters. As John Howard viciously discovered, simply using new media tools such as YouTube will not change consumers’ minds about the quality of your content. And setting up a Facebook profile as a tool for connecting with voters is useless unless you know how to use it and what to communicate through it.

Even religion — smarting from the way that younger generations are beginning to turn away in droves — is embarrassing itself by attempting to use technological tools to reconnect with tha kidz. The Catholic Church has well and truly entered the 1990s by discovering the power of mobile phone SMS. They have been sending text messages to worshippers in the false hope that using semi-literacy for Bible passages will bring them instant cred.

But I suppose the internet and the internet ignorant have one thing in common: they’re both tools.