Banning MySpace; an institutional reaction

Came across this article on a blog I read, about how MySpace is being banned at the highschool level as a gut-level reaction based in fear.

I notice this quite a bit, as I move through life. Not with all institutions, but with many of them. The article is interesting; one of the points it makes is that some schools are banning MySpace because of the ability for kids ( "today's youth" ) to spread what might be refered to as "moral panic" through such social spaces.

This is kind of evil, the banning of a technology or set of innovations simply for the idea that it -might- be used for such ends. The ideas of "might" and "possibly" are heavily weighed against any social benefit or personal reqard or discovery such technology brings... if the positives are indeed considered at all.

This is kind of like banning notepassing or student-run bulliten boards in high school, because you think it might be possible that some kids are participating in conversations that make school administrations nervous. Not that they -are-, mind you, but that they -might- be.

There's a concept in business and academia known as "knowledge management" that in many ways is kind of ephemeral and hard to nail down, but applies here. One way of defining KM is "managing innovation", that is, taking a direct and participatory stance in the development, proliferation and encouragement-of-use of technologies that increase the dissemination of knowledge. Put another way... consider technologies that enable groups of people to share their knowledge, and increase an organization's overall innovation: IMs, wikis, blogs, and social spaces such as MySpace. A smart corporate entity would look at such tools as powerful ways to share knowledge, and jump-start innovation.

Connect your people and get them talking, and good things generlaly happen. In academia, this concept is filed somewhere in the "like, duh" catagory.

Business is a bit slower on the uptake, generally, for several reasons. But in places where KM principles are even less understood, and fear and control come more naturally, such as non-democracies, non-information-culture corporate environments and, um, high schools, tools such as MySpace are banned out of turn for what could possibly happen with them.

This is tragic, lazy, stupid, and a shame, of course.

But potentially a good thing from an anthropological and sociological point of view, though... in such environments where KM can be most useful, the effort by institutions to ban such technology often increases its proliferation. The more The Man tries to keep such things under wraps, the more it grows.

If schools wanted to keep MySpace from spreading, the best/only thing they could do would be to not take a stance at all, or even better offer some alternative for connectivity that they have some hope of moderating or supporting, somehow. Maybe the viral proliferation wouldn't catch. But banning works just as well as advocacy oftentimes, for helping such things flourish.

I'm reminded of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, where Umbridge banned Harry's interview with the Quibbler; everyone had read it by days end, and that's all they talked about for days. I see MySpace enjoying similar popularity in schools where it is banned.

But it does bum me out, such knee-jerk reactions based in fear to technology and priniples that have such an ability to help, to tie a community together.

vive le resistance