Re:

[DAVID A MOLNAR <molnard1@nevada.edu>]

On Sat, 24 Aug 1996, Sean Sutherland wrote:
> > Does anybody know what I can get for generating the credit card
> >  numbers?
> > 
> 
> And they say there's hope for the youth of America.
	It would seem that the hope of the "youth of America" lies in 
convincing all others they do not exist. After all, if behaviour is the 
only standard by which to determine age, one only exists as a "youth" 
when one exhibits the negative qualities of childhood. This is then used 
as an excuse to segregate, control, censor, and reject one's input on the 
grounds of age. 

The offense is not being a youth. The offense is getting caught. Clueless 
remarks (as the above), are a form of "getting caught". 

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see "the youth of America" emerge 
as one of the biggest users of nymservers and anon remailers. With the 
push toward hard identities we're likely to see, I think more and more 
"youth" will come to realize how limiting the stigma of 'child' or 
'teenager' can be, and will work to trandescend it. Besides, there's 
always the need to hide from parents. An entire generation of people 
disappearing into the woodwork, so to speak(*). 

Expect to see a lot of ranting about how the Internet is "stealing away 
childhood" when people finally catch on to what's happening. You could 
say that the current child porn hysteria is just the opening shot. I 
wonder what kinds of laws we will see. Perhaps it will become illegal 
to operate a computer without a license. :-)

-David Molnar

* Yes, yes, "an entire generation" is overreaching future-speak. It 
ignores the millions of people who can't or won't have access to the Net, 
it assumes everyone will want freedom (after all, people stay in AOL's 
monitored chat rooms and speak Beavis and Butthead to each other all day 
long), it assumes enough things to make it a piece of empty rhetoric. 
However, it's a nice-sounding piece of empty rhetoric.