The Internet is not the problem. The Internet is the solution

My partner Brad Burnham appears in the wonderful video below which is called Innovation Blackout. Ostensibly it's about the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation.

And the video is about that, but it's about something more fundamental. A few minutes in Brad says "The Internet is not the problem. The Internet is the solution."

This is the generational divide that I think is playing out right now. At dinner the other night I told my family I was thinking about going on a business trip to Stockholm, Sweden. My daughter's immediate reaction?  "Are you going to get to meet Notch?" - referring of course to @notch of Minecraft fame.  This was in between weekly questions regarding why their school discourages the use Wikipedia.  Which happens in between my son's regular exhortations to "search twitter" when we want to know about a tv show. Which is separate but related to when he - all of 9 years old - used an ipad to go onto Google and find that Fender yes in fact does make an electric guitar for a kid with small hands like him, even though I told him they don't.  He has multiple and life threatening food allergies.  He spends a fair amount of time watching recipe videos - to find foods he can eat and make.  Which of course is related to the time my daughter tried to explain something complicated to me by saying "it's really hard, it's like one million lines of code."

The generational view of technology is right in front of us.  Brad is right.  The solution is right in front of us.