April 15th, 2009
Our brilliant kids are bored
A 17-year-old name Michael ‘Mikeyy’ Mooney made headlines this week by creating a Javascript-based worm that infected 100 user accounts and fired out 10,000 Twitter users before engineers shut it down. According to Techtree,
In an interview with CNET, Mooney said, “I thought about it later, and basically did it because I was bored.” The Mikeyy worm typically spread the infection when the user name or image of the infected account holder is being clicked on; then the worm infects the followers of the infected account holder.
While 100 users isn’t much in the multitudes of Tweeple, the problem is that kids are smart enough to write these sorts of exploits and bored enough to do it rather than channel their talents into really useful projects. How many open source projects are sitting about, waiting for solid programmers to advance them? How many bits of software could be written to make our lives better or improve the way we work? How many really cool and functional Web 2.0 applications could a good Javascript programmer tackle?
All we need are mentors, teachers, business partnerships, and academic tracks in schools that focus kids on exciting projects and engage them in the same ways that creating Twitter exploits can.
No kid this smart should be bored. I have trouble imagining his Indian, Ukranian, or Chinese counterparts causing mischief out of boredom. Anyone out there identifying our most brilliant minds and then pushing them to achieve greatness?
Apparently not. They’d rather write worms for Twitter.
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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