I say that we must examine the underpinnings of our society and thus our way of life. Information Technology (IT) is a tool wielded by people who grow (or don't) out of the culture that is promoted at the most basic levels of society; the playground and school yard. It is these places (institutions) that the foundation for how we conduct ourselves in our adult lives is laid.
We all talk a lot lately about risk management and you may have heard about the shift away from risk aversion to more centric risk acceptance. Yet the next generation of leaders (our kids) is being taught to not take risks in the simplest of ways; the playground.
Government taking fun out of playgrounds?
While city councils cower in fear of the next lawsuit, and parents "protect" children with cocoons of padded foam insulation believing they are doing everything they can to safeguard their children with things like body armor.
Is it just possible that we are exposing, and expressing, our own fears through our children? We the adults in the United States could be so shell shocked and afraid of our own emotional scars, or the threat of being scared, that we are robbing the next generation of not only what it means to be a child (exploration) but teaching them that in order to be safe they have to give up the choice to accept risk.
Accepting risk is the most basic element of information security. We have the challenge today of educating the last generation, current generation, and future generation that risk is with us at all times and to say to a child here is a back pack that will protect you from a gun is to say "duck and cover little one" and you'll be alright. Life isn't safe and neither is operating an information system. We should not retreat into a foam covered play land believing that we are all safer for it. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote "That which does not kill us makes us stronger" and knowing the risks and the freedom to take them are what made this country great.
There can be serious repercussions in such a state that claws its way into our lives and "nannies" us. The Asian nation of Singapore is known as the world's leading nanny state. Lee Kuan Yew, the celebrated former prime minister of that nation, wrote in his memoirs: "We would have been a grosser, ruder, cruder society had we not made these efforts to persuade people to change their ways," and later, "If this is a 'nanny state,' I am proud to have fostered one."
Yew may have been proud — and certainly he was successful, as Singapore is one of the most prosperous nations in the world — but at what price? In 1999, The Economist dubbed Singapore the "world execution capital." For years, media coverage in the nation was stifled, opposition political leaders jailed, and endless draconian nanny rules imposed on the population, from penalties for infractions like spitting or chewing gum to detention without a trial for nonviolent acts against the government. "Freedom of the press must be subordinated to the overriding needs of Singapore," Yew told the International Press Institutes assembly in 1971.
My definition of what makes the United States "super" and what keeps us most secure is our freedom to fall, get scars, and learn from how we fell and see the scar as a constant reminder of our pain. If you go to Washington DC the city is literately filled with monuments to the scars of our national past. It is, if you're mind is open, a gallery of national pain and suffering. From the Viet-Nam wall, to the FDR memorial (very cool at night) which embodies the suffering of the American People during the great depression.
So stand up, take your beatings, and lets be the America that we know we can all be; Proud, not Afraid, and Strong on all fronts. Take risks and know that failure will happen but it is not the failure that is the issue it is what we do once that failure has occurred that is a true measure of greatness.
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