A Net user's license, parallel to a driver's license and the hypothetical gun owner's license?
If I were writing the test, basic netiquette would be on it, for sure, as would understanding basic net mechanics.
On the other hand, I'm just as glad not to have such a test. Even in the face of the truth of today's Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet -- which, Fiorello style, reads like this:
Helen and her boss are looking at a terminal (of which we see the back). Dialogue, panel 1: Helen -- "It really depresses me, what's happened to the Internet"
Well yeah, if there were an entrance exam, an awful lot of the people I'm glad I can talk to via email and LJ, and share cool web sites with, wouldn't be here. I just wish "learn a basic idea of how it works once you find out you want to be here" were a dominant meme among non-geeks.
Similarly, when Permanent September arrived, I wasn't thinking, "There goes the neighbourhood," so much, but more like, "Oh no, how are we going to keep up with educating and socializing them all?"
I remember being being online had its own special cachet. But even then, I was describing it to non-geek friends and relatives and wishing they would see it as a useful tool instead of as "a geek thing" because I wanted to be able to reach them by email too.
(no subject)
If I were writing the test, basic netiquette would be on it, for sure, as would understanding basic net mechanics.
On the other hand, I'm just as glad not to have such a test. Even in the face of the truth of today's Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet -- which, Fiorello style, reads like this:
Helen and her boss are looking at a terminal (of which we see the back). Dialogue, panel 1: Helen -- "It really depresses me, what's happened to the Internet"
Panel 2: Helen -- "All those people got on it"
(no subject)
Similarly, when Permanent September arrived, I wasn't thinking, "There goes the neighbourhood," so much, but more like, "Oh no, how are we going to keep up with educating and socializing them all?"
I remember being being online had its own special cachet. But even then, I was describing it to non-geek friends and relatives and wishing they would see it as a useful tool instead of as "a geek thing" because I wanted to be able to reach them by email too.
So I'm wishing I could convince, not enforce.