"Bibliotheca II, alias “son of Bibliotheca” (last semester’s seminar/studio jointly run by Jeffrey Schnapp & John Palfrey), has now been launched with the help of Ann Whiteside (chief librarian at the Loeb Design Library), Jeff Goldenson (Law Library Innovation Lab), and Ben Brady (GSD). Otherwise known as The Library Test Kitchen or the “library rapid prototyping lab,” it’s being generously funded by the Harvard Library Lab. Questions of every kind are on the table regarding the future of libraries from signage to furniture, policies to experiences. The point is to build stuff: to translate “ah-ha” insights into actual devices, to fabricate the next new online/offline appliance (or at least a plausible iteration of such an appliance). Once these exist, we plan to deploy & test them in partner libraries, such as the Loeb Design, Widener & Fine Arts Libraries, that allocate portions of their public space to experimentation. We’ll be posting our progress to www.librarytestkitchen.org ."

"What does all of this tell us?   Rather than providing parents and children with grater options for controlling the use of youth personal information, COPPA has actually encouraged the adoption of formal limits on children’s access to online services.  Those limits are rather meaningless, though.  As the authors explain, parents are “taking matters into their own hands to circumvent the restrictions . . . at the cost of their children’s privacy and at the risk of acting unethically and potentially in violation of the law.”"

"Facebook, like many communication services and social media sites, uses its Terms of Service (ToS) to forbid children under the age of 13 from creating an account. Such prohibitions are not uncommon in response to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which seeks to empower parents by requiring commercial Web site operators to obtain parental consent before collecting data from children under 13. Given economic costs, social concerns, and technical issues, most general–purpose sites opt to restrict underage access through their ToS. Yet in spite of such restrictions, research suggests that millions of underage users circumvent this rule and sign up for accounts on Facebook…many parents know that their underage children are on Facebook in violation of the site’s restrictions and that they are often complicit in helping their children join the site…COPPA inadvertently undermines parents’ ability to make choices and protect their children’s data."

"I think almost no emphasis is being put on giving kids the skills that they need to sort credible from non-credible information. Schools have to wake up and have to give those skills to our kids. It's the critical thinking skill of the 21st century that they're going to need, sorting credible from not credible information. And I think we're asleep at the switch."