I really want to know how product recalls work. I want to know how much budget the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission gets every year to spend to “protect” us as consumers. And, if you can put a dollar on it, I’d love to know how much businesses have to spent to comply with needless regulations.

First off, let me say that we all agree that death is tragic, especially the accidental death of a child. But, the world isn’t perfect… horrible things will continue to happen no matter how carefully you live your life.

With that said, you may have heard of the recent product recall of 2.1 million cribs. I expected these to be the equivalent of bag of broken glass (Grr NBC for not allowing classic SNL clips to be on youtube, but that’s a different rant!), but come on. Let me point out some facts about these “death traps”.

• 2.1 Million of these items were sold.
• Only 4 deaths are linked to this crib.
• This Deadly Device was on the market for 17 and a half years before anyone noticed.
• The crib is only harmful when its improperly assembled by adults who don’t follow the clear warnings in the instructions!!

Many of these were used by multiple children within one household, and many were likely sold to other people, so there are MANY more then just 2.1 Million children who used these cribs. So, a conservative estimate with round numbers would be, 4 deaths in 2 Million uses over 17 years. That’s a 0.0002% failure rate with one death every 4.25 years.  Really?! Keep in mind that the chance of being struck by lightning is 0.000357%. So, you’re twice as likely to be struck by lightning then to die in one of these cribs. (Many assumptions in those calculations, but you get the point.)

I have no doubt that the people who are crusading to protect us innocent consumers think that they are doing nobel work, but really!? I mean come on. I’d love to be able to follow the money further to see where their salaries are paid and how they choose what products to go after. A “non-profit” organization was on Chicago’s news coverage of the story… I’d love to find out how much they receive in donations and how much of that goes to pay internal costs, like salaries.

Good to know that our government is busy trying to keep us safe. They even have a twitter account. I really feel sorry for the poor soul that has to do that for a living (and how much are they paid to do that?).

I recently came across an interesting book,
The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It. (Yes, you can buy the book from Amazon, but the entire book is under a CC liscense and is available for download at the books website). It provides an interesting retrospective of how the Internet got to where it is, and what may happen to it in the future.

What’s really interesting is the point made in this really well written review:

In passing, I love the brutal critique by Gene Spaford of the $100 laptop. He likens its projected impact–exposing millions to the bright side while not fixing their poverty, water, and disease–to subsidizing pet rats for every household just prior to the Black Death plague. My friend Lee Felsenstein is an equally virulent opponent of the $100 laptop, for different reasons. Me personally, I think the cell phone (but not the iPhone) is the only way to educate 5 billion people fast and with day to day relevance to their needs.

Wow… I never really thought about it, but I think its completely accurate! The One Laptop Per Child initiative has a noble goal of providing inexpensive laptops to poor children around the world as well as ensuring internet connectivity. I can’t argue with the educational aspects of the projects and it certainly would provide much more opportunity to many that the world has ignored for far too long.

However, its always been presumed that those opportunities are strictly positive. They may be overwhelmingly positive, but I’ve never considered the negative effects, nor the things it will have little to no effect on.

The Internet is NOT a safe place. This is obvious but most people forget this. Also, when most people think of the dangers of the internet, they think of either an Internet stalker or identity theft, typically an unrealistic fear of intercepted e-commerce transactions. However, there are far more dangers that are often ignored both by those that are new to the internet (who typically aren’t aware of the dangers and are overly trusting) as well as by those that are quite experienced and are aware of at least some of the dangers (ie, they know what a Trojan is, and why they shouldn’t blindly run untrusted programs).

Whatever platform gets widely deployed will quickly endure a trial-by-fire in which it’s security is tested, for if there are any security holes which allow the laptop to be exploited to send spam or access their personal information, which is a time bomb waiting to happen. As much as I support open software, I’ll be the first to admit that it isn’t perfect and can be exploited. Microsoft certainly has a large target (and with saner software it might not be so easier to exploit), as will any other widely adopted software. As Zittrain says, “People rob banks because that’s where the money is”.

Does this mean that these projects should grind to a halt? Certainly not! However, I hope someone over there has thought long and hard about the security and privacy side of things. It isn’t listed in the Criticism section in OLPC’s Wikipedia page, but that either means it has been addressed sufficiently or it hasn’t yet occured to anyone to make any noise about it yet.

The other completly ignored aspect is how providing internet access won’t do a thing to help with other more important things. Sure, there’s a wealth of information available on the internet, and the education is valuable, but without clean water, medical supplies and political freedom to act on their new information, there really isn’t much one can do, other then realize just how bad they have it in comparison to the rest of the world.

Certainly some thing to think about.