Late on a Friday night in May, when the small
children of first-generation iPad users were fast asleep after bedtime
stories on its fascinating new digital display, a tech blogger launched
this e-mail fireball at Apple CEO
“If Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your
company? Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with
‘revolution?’ Revolutions are about freedom.”
So began an e-debate between the blogger and the CEO.
“Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private
data,” Jobs wrote back. “Freedom from programs that trash your battery.
Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a-changin'”
Seems what set the blogger off was Apple’s new iPad
commercial. The ad touts “revolution” with images of an iPad owner on a
scooter, a parent and child reading Winnie-the-Pooh, and examples of
200,000 applications, aka “apps.”
Among these apps you can find almost anything from
That bothers the tech blogger. So do other standards
Apple set for developers who want to use its platform to reach
consumers. The blogger “worries about Apple’s growing power to limit
self-expression.”
So he shot back: “I don’t want ‘freedom from porn.’ Porn is just fine!”
Jobs suggested the blogger might grow concerned about porn when he has children.
He’s right. Parents have good reason to care about
pornography. Production and consumption of porn are rampant, and
children are particularly vulnerable.
About 116,000 online searches for child pornography
happen daily, according to “The Social Costs of Pornography,” a recent
report from the
That includes young people who trip on it accidentally.
More than a third of adolescents in a national
sample in 2006 said they had been exposed to sexual content online
without seeking it, the
Adolescent girls who consume pornography are more
likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors, studies show. Therapists
report seeing porn-addicted adolescent boys who act out sexual
aggression.
Among adults, pornography consumption is associated with divorce, infidelity and decreased sexual satisfaction.
Production of porn is massive and growing — in quantity and edginess. Time magazine reporter
And pornography exploits all our postmodern world’s
multimedia possibilities, including music videos, video games,
“sexting” via cell phone … and would-be iPad apps.
“Innovation has piled on innovation, making modern pornography a more immediate, visceral, and personalized experience,” wrote
Apple has stretched minds — not to mention wallets —
with its steady stream of innovations from iPod to iPhone to iPad. The
company exists to push the boundaries of the tech user’s experience.
That’s why it’s encouraging to see corporate leaders
exercising moral intuition about the cultural space they’re creating in
a product such as the iPad. Since one of the iPad’s signature features,
Safari, provides access to the Web, the vast content includes porn
sites and still presents challenges for parents.
It’s a different story when it comes to Apple’s app domain, though.
As Jobs explained in his e-mail exchange: “(I)t’s
about Apple trying to do the right thing for its users. … (W)e’re
just doing what we can to try and make (and preserve) the user
experience we envision. You can disagree with us, but our motives are
pure.”
According to his blogging critic, that’s Jobs imposing his morality on the rest of the world.
But, as the Apple CEO correctly points out, there’s
a difference between censorship and corporate stewardship: “Users,
developers and publishers can do whatever they like — they don’t have
to buy or develop or publish on iPads if they don’t want to.”
The reality is that communication of any sort gives
all of us an opportunity to express our morality. Technological
advances exponentially expand our freedom to impress that morality on
the world around us.
With that freedom comes responsibility.
And by putting boundaries on what providers can
offer on its app platform, Apple does a service to parents still
struggling to keep up with today’s innovations, get ready for
tomorrow’s, and shape their children’s moral intuition for a lifetime.
———
(c) 2010, The Heritage Foundation
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
