Does anyone see the irony?

Here's an interesting story out of China about a teenager who was "attacked at a Chinese internet rehabilitation camp", state media reports.

According to the AFP: "the 14-year-old boy was in critical condition in hospital after repeated beatings at an internet rehabilitation camp in southwest China".

Apparently the kid was sent to the camp by his parents "to be cured of internet addiction".

The irony comes in the paragraph that begins:

"The death triggered online outrage in China..."

It is a sad state of affairs when kids are sent to rehab for an addiction to the internet -- which will be the subject of a forthcoming blog entry. Stay tuned.

For further reading:

*Check the NY Times' story from 2007 about an internet boot camp in South Korea

Project Gutenberg V Google Books V TROLL (The Reality Of Life Lads)*

Books are going digital people, it is a fact of life that we all have to deal with.

Copyright issues aside (See today's Wired.com story) technology will continue to march on and drag us with it.

Are you be a member of the choral line of discontented bibliophiles who have put their foot down, declaring: "I will NEVER read a book on a touch-screen hand held device" (for those even less technologically savvy your statement will read: "I will NEVER read a book on one of those touch-screen doodywacky thingys")?

Good. I'm glad you have made a stand.

Unfortunately there are people out there who will.

Grandmother hedgehog refers to these people as "those young 'uns with their 'crazy' hairdos and 'fancy' clothes that barely cover anything. And that's just the boys, or the ones that I think are boys but maybe the girls, I don't know anymore, you're all so androgynous".

But that's not the case anymore either.

Who hasn't stopped by at some point and checked out Project Gutenberg at some point during their travels through the tubes of the interwebz?

It's all the same really -- books will go online and people will read them online -- hell, how do you think the interwebz works? We sit in front of a computer all most every day checking out wikipedia entries and reading newspapers online instead of buying them.

Most people 20 years ago (how old's the interwebz again?) dreamed of a paperless office and scoffed at the idea of sitting in front of computers every day.

Check out this nice 2005 article from the Wall Street Journal, an interview with Michael Hart, the founder of PG

Don't fret, the sky isn't falling in -- Google won't let it, just yet at least.


* TROLL is now copyrighted to me, which means that ethically you should source this blog if you want to use it or fear the wrath of McTavish, Hedgehog of Fury.