content control

Surfing the net within campus has its limits. Besides the fact that you share bandwith with the rest of the world, you can't friendster or facebook during office hours. I wonder who determines which sites should be restricted and which sites should be allowed. I wonder what their criteria is. Most of all, I wonder how often they update their list.

I suppose the bigger question pertains to the purpose of providing internet access to students and employees. If access is purely for academic reasons, then I can imagine that content control is important. But then again, with the variety of topics and subjects that are studied in our university, can one really keep track of "legitimate" academic inquiries? I think that to limit access to certain sites only can have a "chilling effect" on the possible areas of study of the students. The fact that to open access to all sites might result in indulging in non-academic pursuits does not justify the indirect curtailment of access to information.

Perhaps we can have two networks (or whatever it is called) - one for accredited or traditional academic pursuits and another for non-traditional ones. It might even result to better web traffic and prevent lag and frequent disconnection.

Or we can just stick to the existing framework. I'm just too happy that www.perezhilton.com isn't on mr. head honcho's list of blocked sites. :)