Flutterby™! : Dry ice bomb 2010-07-01 17:53:38.102147+00

Dry ice bomb

2010-07-01 17:53:38.102147+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

Mother of a 14 year old boy charged with possession of a destructive device and child abuse because he was making a dry ice bomb.

I really want to know more about this case. Via /., wherein the first post right now terms this the "war on curiousity".

Or, if we didn't alienate those who seek out knowledge about the physical world, and celebrated learning for its own sake, we might have fewer people interested in killing as a response to an irrational culture.

On the other hand, in an era of Columbine and the shoe bomber, police might be thought to have some concern about people setting off explosives, even small ones. If the mother of the Times Square bomber had been a bit more indulgent, he might have killed a few hundred people.

Larry: My first thought was that you were full of it. But, as a product of public education, I wasn't really thinking critically enough. ;) While the intent may not be to monetize knowledge, it is the end result. We are told acquiring knowledge is a dangerous activity, best left to the experts. Hence, it's considered child abuse if you don't send your kids to the expert at the school to learn their ABCs.

This is ironic because we now have more information at our finger tips than any other point in history. The tools for self-learning are readily available. Yet, the officials make the process out to be hazardous.

I wonder if there is a connection with the production of knowledge? Until recently, the creation of new ideas was largely left to the experts. In Ben Franklin's day all it took to produce knowledge was curiosity and gumption. Now we are seeing through WikiPedia and OpenStreetMap that even the most authorative knowledge sources can be challenged by products of laymen. And yet, we seem to return to the experts.

Maybe (hopefully) what we are seeing are the dying gasps of an over-extended social institution. Colleges and Universities are pricing themselves into extinction. WikiPedia effectively killed Brittanica. The DIY culture grows while the cops arrest mothers for fostering their kids curiosity. Much of it fueled by the laisez faire internet.

Something I'm beginning to figure out, and that worries me because I may get charged for it, is that we are entering a period of time when knowledge is a commodity that is bought and sold. You can't be peering into airplane cockpits unless you are paying an instructor to do so. You can't make dry ice bombs unless a school or college is receiving funding from you to learn the physics involved. If we start learning stuff on our own then we are violating someone else's IP rights unless someone is getting a piece of the action.

Do you really want to know why critical thinking is no longer taught in public schools? It might allow someone to circumvent IP protection.