Stupidity in the new media era?
I love to discuss new media issues from its content aspect. Of course, new media is not only about its content, but also about its technology’s infrastructure and medium itself. Wikipedia defines new media is “a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or networked information and communication technologies in the later part of the 20th century”.
To some extend, seems new media designated as a response to, what we called as, the digital divide. The term digital divide refers, still according to Wikipedia, to the gap between those people with effective access to digital and information technology and those without.
Unfortunately, many prefer talk about this issue only from its affordability side, Economic Divide. According to Jakob Nielsen, most commentators view this in purely economic terms. However, Nielsen revealed, two other types of divide will have much greater impact in the years to come: Usability Divide and Empowerment Divide.
Usability Divide: Far worse than the economic divide is the fact that technology remains so complicated that many people couldn’t use a computer even if they got one for free.
Enpowerment Divide: The empowerment divide, however, is the hard one: even if computers and the Internet were extraordinarily easy to use, not everybody would make full use of the opportunities that such technology affords.
So, I just recalled the Nielsen’s Three Stages of Digital Divide (especially its second and third stages) when read the news this morning that Indonesian Ministry of Education already published names, addresses and details of 36 million students in the country in their website!
A blogger who broke this news wrote:
The database was put online a while ago but Google had already indexed it by now - if you have kids at school (private, public and religious schools all) – you can try googling them and see what comes out. You can find the FULL FILES in XLS downloadables without too much trouble. Of your children.
The government’s blunder just confirmed one thing: the government officers have lack of capacity and capability in optimizing the new media benefit. They might have a good intent to put online a complete database (”took giant leaps to bridge the digital divide“), but didn’t aware about privacy and security. How could they published the complete addresses and details (even the date of births) in their website?
I just downloaded one of its Excel files, and getting shock reading all details of Indonesian student listed there! (Sure, I will not post any link here for obvious reasons).
Nielsen also writes: “Even government sites that target poorer citizens are usually written at a level that requires a university degree to comprehend.” But it doesn’t happen to the Indonesia’s government - particularly in this case. The sentence should be like this: “Even the country’s government site (especially a particular section of the Indonesian Ministry of Education site) written far below the junior high school student standard”.
Even the teenagers know not to disclose their addresses and DOBs in their Friendster profiles!
Albert Einstein is right when saying: “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits”.
P.S Other recent blogosphere reactions:
- THIS SHOULD BE STOPPED - Fajar Jasmin
- Hentikan: Data Siswa Indonesia online! - Leonnie FM
Follow me: twitter.com/budip
1 treespotter
nicely put…
now maybe bapak2 blogger will make the call to the minister and ask them to shut it down?
October 10th, 2008 at 9:25 pm2 Budi Putra
Working on it, Sir. Just called some prominent bloggers this morning
October 10th, 2008 at 9:29 pm3 Leonnie FM
well said, sir.
as a mother I must say thanks for your effort.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:54 pmLet’s hope Diknas will notice our effort & really shut it down.
4 Pitra
Hopefully it will be removed quickly. Just when I post about privacy in my blog 2 days ago, these things actually happened.. aaghh.. For those who like to keep their privacy private should consider these tips: http://media-ide.bajingloncat.com/2008/10/08/menjaga-kerahasiaan-pribadi-di-ranah-maya
Hope those idiot people in Diknas will read them too!!
October 10th, 2008 at 10:48 pm5 avianto
Why am I got the feeling that this is just the beginning of something terrible… hopefully I am wrong tho.
Damn…
October 10th, 2008 at 11:18 pm6 Andy OrangeMood
They like a child with a gun, don’t know what they can do with that… Sadly, but they will and must “learn” or someone must “teach” them.
Hope this things fixed asap.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:21 pm7 Budi Putra
@Pitra just read your piece, interesting.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:34 pm@avianto like your terminology of “just the beginning of something terrible”…
@Andy OrangeMood totally agree with you
8 avianto
@budip, normally I would say ‘I had a bad feeling about this’ - but terrible is the right word…
October 10th, 2008 at 11:42 pm9 Belutz
Intrusion of Privacy, i know this will be coming in Indonesia
October 11th, 2008 at 12:11 am10 Fajar Jasmin
Thanks for taking the time to do this. I think what we should agree upon is NOT stopping until they take down the data……
October 11th, 2008 at 1:06 am11 w
DOS!
October 11th, 2008 at 12:54 pm12 Brett
Great post. I hope you continue with the theme of the digital divide, because it is not just about this Google/privacy issue. The usability/empowerment divides are particularly relevant to Indonesia.
It will be interesting to know what the Govt’s long term plan is and whether well-developed legal concepts of data protection and ownership, ISP liability, (copyright) fair use principles, etc are included. It’s pretty clear that the legislators have thought about pornography, but what about privacy? Protecting our children from pornography is only part of the equation.
Indonesia has a distinct advantage over developed countries in that these principles had to develop after the fact, i.e. once people started realizing that “paper rules” don’t work in a “digital world”. There are a variety of legal frameworks in place around the World. Some work, and others don’t. Indonesia can pick and choose the best bits for a model that will serve the specific needs of Indonesians.
I’m sure the Government has done this and what we are seeing is just a VERY unfortunate case of bad planning.
October 11th, 2008 at 11:05 pm13 Khalid Mustafa
Thanks for the information, the Ministry of Education officials who make this program initially have read this information, and are now following up the reports.
Complete info, please read also in:
http://khalidmustafa.info/?p=492
October 12th, 2008 at 1:35 am14 Budi Putra
@Brett thanks for your valuable insight.
October 12th, 2008 at 4:15 am15 sandynata
kalo liat di situsnya, ada tuh kontak personnya, mungkin bisa dihubungi
*lha komengnya kok pake bhs indo?*
October 12th, 2008 at 6:11 pm16 prasasto
I checked the site, the data, and there’re no data about date of birth and address of every student.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:29 am17 Budi Putra
Yeah, they have removed it already. Good news, but they also ask Google to remove the database from its caches.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:01 pm18 mtamim
Bagaimanapun sebenarnya DAPODIK merupakan upaya positif yang dimulai DEPDIKNAS. masalah ada kesilapan ini harus diakui bahwa SDM di DEPDIKNAS memang masih perlu diperbaiki. Jangan sampai kasus ini dilihat secara negatif dan digebyah-uyah bahwa DEPDIKNAS tak becus dsb. Mengenalkan pemanfaatan IT utk pendidikan saja di antara pejabat DIKNAS saat ini saja masih susah minta ampun. Jangan sampai kasus ini jadi bumerang dan menjadikan para petinggi DIKNAS menjadi antipati dengan teknologi informasi.
http://mtamim.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/hikmah-dari-%e2%80%9cdiumbarnya-data-siswa%e2%80%9d-oleh-depdiknas/
salam hangat
October 14th, 2008 at 1:01 am19 sevenco
i can’t see why displaying your DOB in your friendster profile is a bad thing. is it?
October 14th, 2008 at 4:21 am20 Budi Putra
@sevenco: of course, it’s not a bad thing - but at least, should be displayed with permission / approval from the DOB “owner”. Thanks
October 14th, 2008 at 4:56 am21 sufehmi
i can’t see why displaying your DOB in your friendster profile is a bad thing. is it?
October 15th, 2008 at 12:51 pm.
In many cases this information is used to secure your data.
.
If you ever called your bank by phone, credit card company, or other call centers; you’ll remember that your DOB is one of the question asked to verify that you are REALLY you.
.
Another proof - Sarah Palin’s email account was hacked because the hacker knew her DOB.
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So, guard your private data well.