Thursday, July 06, 2006

Long Drive Home

Thanks for all the comments and feedback after my presentation on Wednesday. I hope that it wasn't too long or sounded a little windy -- I was a little worried about opening up with Aldus Huxley and George Orwell. And Neil Postman brings it all together in a single line:

“For no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand what its dangers are."

In chatting with other SIDs after the session, both young and "old", I am even more convinced of the central premise of the presentation: the end users, in this case, Millennial generation college students and precollege students, have absolutely no understanding of what the dangers are.
Let me share a couple of post meeting items:
Another school SID said he has repeatedly advised his female student-athletes that its a bad idea to post schedules, and now, without thinking about the security impacts, had been using the "where are you now" function to say she was at the study center in the middle of the night. She didn't give a moments thought to the fact she'd just broadcast exactly where she was, and where she was going shortly, her dorm room address.
I received further confirmation of the use of Facebook by our NCAA predators -- agent "runners" and gamblers -- from a couple of schools. Both nipped the attempts in the bud, but they are receiving incredible amounts of intelligence.
There was great interest in proprietary information restrictions, as there should. Think this example through. It's Thursday of game week. Star player twists a knee. Teammates, roommates, maybe even star himself, posts on Facebook he's on his way to the doctor, or gives a prognosis. That's a golden triple play -- we've got a HIPPA violation, advantage for the opponent and a piece of information tout sheets in the past spent considerable time and money to gleen for the betting line.
Still think student's right to free expression outweighs the institution?
Also, for those that asked, the PowerPoint is being shipped to CoSIDA.com for posting, and I'll try later today to put back-end links at LADYBACKS.COM for the PP and PDFs.

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