When discussing topics about how to teach my kids privacy, it kind of leaks into more general stuff people in the world should understand about computers and networks. This used to be called the “digital divide” and many academics warned (still do but aren’t heard as well) that this split in the average consumer both depending on computers while simultaneously not understanding how they work or how they make the technoligarchs money is going to lead us to…well what we have today and what will keep getting worse. Consumers stuck with 2-3 choices of phones and oligopolies that could care less about climate change and stealing your data making privacy way harder if you want to live in the world, etc…
Most shit I see these days in my own fancy town library on computer literacy is “How to use that darned iPhone” or “The Internet is scary, make sure you use this safe browser so nobody (but us) can steal all your information”.
I want there to be a end-to-end resource much like Privacy Guides for privacy that actually has the material that break down what computing is and can point you to hands on ways to learn or teach your family Ben Eater’s 8 bit computer like Ben Eater. Except I would want to do it in two ways, one way in which you run through Ben’s project yourself, or the other way is I do it in a more passive consumption and sped up way for those who just want to see what “hacking” actually looks like.
Maybe taking apart common things like routers and talking about what different components on the board do. Talk about open source alternatives to firmware.
Then have other areas of the site that covers material like how to navigate the internet. Show wireshark and headers and different things that I can see when you visit my site depending on what you are using. It’s not about showing them wireshark so much as it is just showing them that open tools exists that can expose this information and here’s what that information looks like and how it may be used against you. This kind of ties into the first bit that I quoted around teaching teens about surfing porn and stuff, or if they share nudes, they may not share their face, but is there identifying information on the body part they shared, the background or the metadata in the image…all that stuff could be used by a jealous ex or something along that line.
Also catfishing and all that stuff…
Show coffee shop demonstrations where I snoop around and gather people’s information with their consent. This could obviously lead into linking privacy guides stuff, but for me would be more about the “how does this stuff happen and work”?
How to set up your own intranet, how to build a town emergency communication system with meshtastic, and other things but ultimately distill this into valuable stuff you could work on in your community.
I want there to be a way for folks to almost have better mental models of not just privacy, but like have images of what information is likely to be captured given their current setup and login information, etc… I wonder if there’s already an equivalent of a site like Privacy guides that covers a more exhaustive computer basics course. If so, could anyone link it?
Thanks!