Technology "Solutions"

As many of know and many more probably don’t (or don’t care), before taking on the sure-to-be illustrious and definitely industrious task of being a student in the MAC program, I worked at The Ann Arbor News for about 10 years (actually, almost exactly 10 years, but that is irrelevant) as an editorial aide and then editorial aide supervisor. Among the many duties I undertook in my decade of employment there, was writing briefs for the business page. What does this have to do with technology in education you ask? Well, not much, really, but I was reflecting on my brief-writing experience Friday when we were talking about internet filters.
The first thing I learned when writing business briefs is how to translate press releases created by businesses, and their p.r. companies, and marketing employees, and the like (“flacks” as they are called in the news biz). Among the many translations I learned was that instead of calling software what it is, that is, software, businesses that sell it call their software “solutions.” I started thinking about that within the context of internet filters and how they are supposed to (and probably are marketed as) providing the “solution” to the threat of young people viewing offensive and objectionable material on the internet, as well as to keep them out of harms way by blocking them from social networking sites, and potentially from predators. And that is all well and good (and perhaps even necessary), but the fact remains, that what internet filters are, are software, not solutions, and all the internet filter “solutions” in the world are not going to take away all the objectionable material and “sickos” out there, which is why I hold firmly to the belief that the real solution is education. I mean, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing anyway? We certainly wouldn’t want software solving the teacher “problem,” would we?