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The arrogance of this CEO (demonstrated by the paragraph below) is mind-boggling. Whether I trust the NSA or not is irrelevant to the question of whether I want
by credo 11y ago
The arrogance of this CEO (demonstrated by the paragraph below) is mind-boggling. Whether I trust the NSA or not is irrelevant to the question of whether I want private companies tracking my children.
That said, this sort of tracking is happening in my son's school as well and I'm trying to figure out how I should respond to this. Many schools (here in the Seattle area) ask kids to do their homework online. My son (in elementary school, public school) does math homework on the IXL website. They track all of his online time, the specific timeframe he worked on his homework, time spent on questions etc. This information is also made available to his teacher. I plan to discuss related privacy issues with his teacher
>>Knewton CEO Jose Ferreira finds such concerns overblown. When parents protest that they don’t want their children data-mined, Ferreira wishes he could ask them why: Is it simply that they don’t want a for-profit company to map their kids’ minds? If not, why not? “They’d rather the NSA have it?” he asked. “What, you trust the government?”
- paganel 11y ago> They track all of his online time, the specific timeframe he worked on his homework, time spent on questions etc. This information is also made available to his teacher. I plan to discuss related privacy issues with his teacher I don't have kids but I find this to be insane. I remember when I was a 4th grader (~25 years ago) I used to quickly do my homework early in the morning, just before school and eating breakfast, not all of it, mind you, just the one or two exercises that would show the teacher I cared enough about the stupid homework. I spent my free time as a kid on much more valuable staff, like reading Jules Verne or playing with other kids, which have helped me more in life than those homeworks.
- atmosx 11y agoI am extremely sensitive in privacy issues, but between the NSA that could abuse some part of the data and a private corp. who will try to EXPLOIT the data in EVERY POSSIBLE WAY, I'd go with the NSA any day of the week. From the answer, we can rest assured that this guy WILL exploit the data he gets in every possible way, no matter the consequences.
- FilterSweep 11y agoI fear the fact that you have to choose between the lesser of two evils to begin with is the real issue at hand. But I agree.