life in cyberspace column

[David Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

Subject:   life in cyberspace column


HEADLINE              Life In Cyberspace
                      The Internet Is Also Fair Game for The 13-Year-Old
BYLINE                Joshua Quittner
                      NEWSDAY (c)
         I JUST GOT E-MAIL from someone named Moxie. He writes that, my
  last column notwithstanding, he can't pull up my .plan file. (A .plan
  file is kind of like a business card that anyone should be able to read
  on the Net.)
      One solution, he writes, is to "simply type: chmond ug+r
  $HOME/.plan" in the command line.
      Simply?
      Clearly Moxie, whoever he is, has a different view of complexity
  than me, and I am impressed. While I'm contemplating that, Moxie, who
  happens to be online on the same system I'm on, beeps me  -  indicating
  that he wants to "chat." ("Chatting," online, usually takes the form of
  two people typing at each other, in real time.)
      We chat. Moxie is pleasant and articulate, which you can't help but
  notice in a world that's jammed full of science/engineer/
  don't-read-literature types. Eventually, he helps me remove an
  electronic pebble from my virtual shoe. (The last line of text always
  gets cut off on my PowerBook when I'm reading news in Usenet. "Why,
  Moxie, why?" I type. He tells me to check the configuration file of my
  communications program. Of course!)
      Moxie, clearly, is a valuable find. Sensing the opportunity to bag
  another brain for my source collection, I type, "What do you do for a
  living?"
     "Are you sure you want to know?" Moxie types back.
     "Of course I want to know," I reply, thinking, what can be so bad? Is
  he a lawyer? A dentist? . . .
     "Well," types Moxie, "I'm 13 years old and go to junior high school
  in Merrick."
       Thunk. That's me passing out.
       I feel like that guy in "The Crying Game." All this time, I've been
  chatting with  -  no, getting educated by  -  A THIRTEEN YEAR OLD!
       Now, I'm no age-bigot or anything. I know young teenagers are
  important to . . . um . . . the economy, because they buy all those
  baggy, way-long shorts that droop below their knees. And, if it weren't
  for 13-year-olds, there'd be no Beavis and Butthead, no bar mitzvahs
  either. But still, I never imagined I'd be having a chat with one that
  was intellectually stimulating.
     It was kind of an epiphany. It shouldn't have been. It makes perfect
  sense that Moxie, whose real name is Mark Mentovai, is 13:
      The Internet belongs to 13-year-olds; cyberspace is as much their
  world as mine. When you're 13, life itself is still new, surprising and
  yet tough to navigate. Just like the Internet. A 13-year-old gets online
  and finds out he needs to learn a little Unix to get around the Net.
  Fine, he learns Unix. What else is he going to do? His taxes?
     Just to be sure Moxie isn't really, say, a 58-year-old legal
  secretary giving me the business, I do a little database work, finding
  out his real name, running his family's name through a list of
  registered voters on Long Island. I find a telephone number for the
  family and call. A kid picks up the phone on the first ring. When he
  says "hello" his voice cracks, and I think a.) He really is 13 and
  b.)It's great to be 37. Compared to 13, 37 is like being Cary Grant.
     Moxie tells me he got his first computer for Christmas, four years
  ago. The modem came later, "for graduation from sixth grade last year."
  Moxie explains his technique for getting the modem: "I bugged my
  parents. I had to bug them for a year. You know, every now and then,
  `Mom, can I have a modem?^ Or, `Dad, can you go out and ask mom to get
  me a modem? Kevin's getting one . . . ^ " Kevin is Moxie's friend. I
  don't think he has a modem yet.
     Moxie gets his modem, naturally; no parent could withstand his
  scorched-earth attack and he also gets an account on CompuServe, so he
  can correspond with an uncle in Connecticut. "We were both e-mailing
  each other and telling cool places we found." It only whetted Moxie's
  appetite. His mother, already worn down by The Modem War, launched a
  pre-emptive strike:
     "For my thirteenth birthday this year, my mom made this booklet that
  said `Internet!^ on every single page, twenty pages of it. Finally, on
  the last page it said that I could research the local providers and find
  out which one would be cost efficient, and subscribe," said Moxie. "I
  like researching that stuff." Moxie shocker.
     At first, his parents showed the usual concern any parent might have
  about opening their child up to 25 million people. "My parents would
  look over my shoulder a lot, especially when I read e-mail. After a
  while, they got bored with it," he said, noting that occasionally now,
  when they do angle in for a shoulder surf, he blocks their view. "Some
  stuff I don't let them read because they shouldn't read it," he says.
     "Like what?" I ask.
     "Well, you probably shouldn't know either," he said.
     Now, I know there's lots of stuff on the Net that a 13-year-old kid
  shouldn't be exposed to, at least until he's say, 14, and, I'm all too
  aware of the hapless hysteria emanating from television news magazines
  about cyber-perverts and all the rest, so I ask Moxie how he handles it.
     "I don't get into that stuff," he said, referring to the many news
  groups that provide forums for "adult" discussions. He also practices
  safe computing. "My mom and dad warned me about 10,000 times: I never
  give out information about myself to people. My name is my limit."
     We talk a while longer about what it's like being 13 years old on the
  Internet and how it's fun to talk to adults who don't have any
  preconceived notions of who you are (hmmmm, maybe they're not really
  adults either?) and Moxie said that there are a lot of people out there
  like him. Thirteen years old, that is. In fact, he points me to a
  little-known Usenet group, called K12.chat.junior that exists solely for
  sixththrough eighth-graders.
     Well, I've gone this far . . .
     I check into the Usenet group to see what sixththrough eighth-graders
  talk about online. It was not a pretty sight.
     "I'M BORED," says one message's subject line. "Key pal wanted!!!!!"
  say lots of others.
     "Nothing happened today," writes a person named Lisa. "A stupid
  grade-eight loser took my seat on the bus and of course the bus driver
  is too dumb to make a seating plan."
      "Hey dudes and dudettes! How's it going? Just wanted to say hi,"
  someone else writes.
       "I am in grade seven and turning twelve November fourteenth. I live
  in Alberta Canada. I have a few fish, two dogs (Maltise Poodl), two
  turtles, one cat and one iguana (our other Iggy ran away :(" writes a
  third.
      I'm starting to get dizzy from the correspondence. There are more
  than 700 posts from the past week. One thing you see immediately is, the
  hype about how computers are geared for boys is ridiculous: Most of the
  people here are girls.
      Someone named Fern, who apparently just got back from a vacation in
  Canada, asks: "One thing I did wonder (never stopped to see) is if
  McDonalds has Quarter Pounders or like .5 kilogrammers. Any Canadians
  know?"
      A Canadian eighth grader responds: "We have Quarter Pounders. . . .
  What's a .5 kilogrammer??"
      I can't take anymore of this. I need to talk to an adult. Wonder
  what Moxie's up to.


  To contact Joshua Quittner via e-mail on the Internet: quit@newsday.com