The Truth is at Both Extremes

Technology Review: The Myths Of Growing Up Online

Alarmist and polarized rhetoric is distorting important new findings about the risks and benefits of children's use of the Internet.

This article besides being an excellent article about findings related to children & Internet usage and about how old (/traditional/big) media exhibits its same old properities even when covering new (/internet) media (no surprise), also rings against a pet theme.

When can you point at what is true not false about the positions on the outside? The popular phrase is that the truth is in the middle, but the middle is often more about indifference. Witnessing two extremists arguing, both talking, spit flying, most would walk away uninterested (or else remain watching, but not really listening).

The idealized middle would rather be the balanced position constructed from attending to the truths and ignoring the lies at the edges. As I love to say when talking about my Environmental Issues chapter in Understanding USA, the cornucopians and catastrophist are both right, the sky is falling and people are clever. We designed the debate blocks at the bottom in service of the theme of truth at the edges. [download the PDF to read my pages, lots of fine text meant for print]