An Interview With John Carosella Of Blue Coat Systems

Posted by Ken

In September of 2006, I wrote a review about K9 Web Protection, a parental control software made by Blue Coat Systems. Since then, John Carosella, vice president of content control at Blue Coat Systems, has responded to reader’s who post comments and questions about their popular product.

I asked John to participate in my first interview here on Family WebWatch and he graciously accepted. In fact, he has so much insightful information, I wanted to break it up into a series of posts this week. So here is the first installment of three.

FWW: John, tell us a little about yourself please.

John: I started working at Blue Coat in early 2004, after spending several years at a tiny startup. Prior to that, I worked at Nokia in their Silicon Valley unit. I was responsible for the Nokia/Check Point secure firewall appliance product â€“ very popular with IT organizations around the world because it was secure, reliable, and very easy to use. As the product architect, I placed the “user experience” at the top of the priority list. Without a good user experience, your product doesn’t get used. And “user experience” is much broader than “user interface” â€“ it’s about the behavior of the product throughout its lifecycle, and is revealed in the simple question: “Do you like this product?” We’ve tried to bring the same discipline to our work on K9 Web Protection.

FWW: Over the years, kids have always shown an affinity toward technology especially if it makes them cool in the eyes of their friends, or allows them to express themselves and interact with others. With so much technology surrounding us today, what do you see as the greatest challenge to parents? Is technology to blame? Parent involvement? A little of both?

John: It would be easy to blame parents. We’re all too busy to really connect deeply with our kids, and co-experience the world with them, at the level we “should”. But that’s not a helpful perspective, because so much across our culture interferes with that connection. Technology is one very large element, along with aggressive, in-your-face media, companies who are “marketing” to kids, and a general dissolution of “community” in our cities, towns, and neighborhoods. Sounds like I’m painting with a very broad brush, but as I’ve looked at the roots of our challenges in this area over the past two years, I’m increasingly convinced that it’s not a simple (or short-term) problem with a simple fix.

Alvin Toeffler, in his 1970 book “Future Shock”, wrote about the impact of rapidly evolving technology on society and culture. Toffler defined future shock as “too much change in too short a period of time”. So, without question, the rate of change is the biggest challenge for parents. How do we provide enlightened guidance to our kids when they’re living in a different universe than we are? It’s not even that they’re childhood is different from ours. Their TODAY is different from ours. That’s how fast change is bearing down on us.

Interestingly, humans are the species that is most adaptable to change â€“ we’re supposed to be good at this kind of thing. And in fact, we are, overall. It’s just hard to be a parent in the middle of it!

MySpace FWW: In the wake of successful sites like MySpace, Facebook, and the like, online social communities seem to be popping up every day. We sometimes hear in the media where these types of communities played some role in what ended up as a tragic event in some young person’s life. In general, do you think online communities are doing enough to protect their members?

John: No, I don’t. And in some cases, they’re reducing the protections in the interests of increasing market share. You know, whenever we expect an organization (of any kind) to “self-regulate”, we have to look at whether there is an inherent conflict of interest in the regulations we’re asking them to apply. If your business is selling cigarettes, for example, how effective are you going to be in setting up limits and controls to a) not create demand for cigarettes, and b) not sell them? Laughable, if it weren’t tragic, right?

The same goes for social networking sites. If you’re in the business of making social connections as dynamic and frictionless as possible, how effective are you going to be in creating friction that slows the process down, or creating roadblocks that prevent that dynamism? Can we honestly blame these players for “not doing enough”? On their own, without a sensible social policy backed by legislatively-imposed regulation, they’re bound to fail us.

So they’re not doing “enough”, but then, I think it’s naÃ¯ve of us to expect them to, on their own.

FWW: Could you give us examples of sites that you think are doing a good job at making their environment safe and educational for kids?

John: I’ve had the opportunity to watch the evolution of Children’s Way. I’m fascinated by this company’s model. They combine the best intentions of child online safety, a lesson in Civics, and education on proper Internet use with a fun online environment for kids. Kind of like “Club Penguin”, but with a higher social purpose. The kids enjoy it, and learn a bunch along the way. But perhaps the most important aspect of the Children’s Way initiative is that it incentivizes kids to grab Mom or Dad by the hand, and sit with them to do certain exercises. Kind of like earning a merit badge, the kid gets credit when Mom or Dad learns something that makes him/her a better “Internet Parent”.

As I look at the challenges we face as parents, this model is really fundamentally correct. The only way to get the parents to be educated enough to be helpfully involved is to have the kids drag them, kicking and screaming. Children’s Way is a great model for making that happen.

Children’s Way is for younger kids, and teaches “online citizenship” to both kids and parents in the context of play and challenge, which is why I think it works so much better than so many other “child-safe” sites.

FWW: What do you see as the biggest threat to families today when it comes to their online activities?

Think wisely John: Broadly speaking, it’s the lack of knowledge; lack of knowledge of the kind of content, experiences, and dangers that are out there. We are seduced by the simplicity, (false) intimacy, and dynamism of the online experience. And it seems so friendly, fun, and harmless. Sheesh! Nothing could be further from the truth. Internet behavior is PUBLIC behavior. If we really understood that EVERYTHING we do online is done IN PUBLIC, I think our behaviors would change; pretty dramatically in many cases.

FWW: Overall, do you think parents are getting involved enough with their children and the way they spend time on the Web?

John: No, I don’t. But again, when you look at the realities of the culture we’re living in, it’s hardly surprising, and barely remediable. As I said, we’re living in different worlds. And that’s why I like the premise behind Children’s Way so much: for the kids to make progress, the parents have to be involved.

This concludes the first of three installments with John Carosella. Tune-in later this week when he discusses his viewpoint on a topic every parent should be sensitive to: cyberbullying.

[tags]interview,blue coat,k9 web protection,web safety,family,parenting[/tags]