There’s been quite a bit of controversy recently about Lord Stephen Carter’s report on the future for “Digital Britain” (see Bill Thompson on the BBC site and Cory Doctorow in the Guardian).

The aim is to establish how the good ol’ U of K can stay at the forefront of the global digital economy. What got reported on the release of the interim report was the plan to give broadband to all households by 2012. However, a large number of commentators seem to saying that the whole thing is geared towards to interests of telco’s, ISP’s and the entertainment industry and misses loads of opportunities to be innovative in its outlook.

You can read the stuff yourselves if it takes your fancy but I found this bit quite interesting from an educational perspective. It’s from Cory Doctorow’s column in the Guardian…

“The internet generation is growing up in an age of configurable media, where the tools in homes can be used to remix and reimagine the media around them, giving them a fluidity and expertise in technology that may leave us with a generation of media experts ready to step up and become the next wave of British creators.

“Unless, that is, we continue to prosecute and harass these kids who are using the net to collaborate on and share their remixes, treating them as criminals. No one chased the Beatles through the streets of Liverpool, calling them criminals for playing the popular tunes of the day in order to learn their craft. But today, the multinationals and billionaires who control the rights to the Beatles and other British culture are doing everything in their power to shut down the kids who are noodling with culture using laptops instead of guitars.

“Lord Carter is proposing to shackle the experimenters who represent Digital Britain’s future to safeguard some minor licensing streams for the winners of Britain’s analogue past.

“A real Digital Britain strategy would seek to change the law to legalise noncommercial, transformative use.”

Guardian 10th Feb 2009

I’m tempted to draw parallels between this and the fact that most schools when faced with a new technology that threatens the status quo (YouTube, mobiles, mp3′s, tamagochis et al) have the instinctive reaction to ban it . There are plenty of opportunities that are not being exploited due to a reactive, conservativism in some schools (not all). To use Stephen Covey’s terminology, it solves an urgent perceived problem now but fails to address what is important.