Passage of the Day, About the Dingaling of the Day
From Isaac Post’s column today at TCS Daily:
Walking around a corner, one never knows what will appear. Yet in order to move forward, it’s often necessary to turn corners anyway, despite some small degree of uncertainty.
At Canada’s Lakehead University, however, that uncertainty has become the basis for some troubling reasoning regarding wi-fi, a technology that allows Internet connectivity without the hassle of wires. Frozen stiff by a little known but influential idea known as the Precautionary Principle, the university has decided against implementing wi-fi for health reasons — despite no serious evidence of risk. Lakehead’s net remains strictly landlocked.
Lakehead’s president, Dr. Fred Gilbert, defended his decision by saying that “While the jury’s out on this one, I’m not going to put in place what is potential chronic exposure for our students.” In other words, his safety fears aren’t based on any documented threat, but instead are a reflection of his aversion to the nebulous possibility of risk.
Students and parents at this university need to employ an adapted version of the Precautionary Principle, which states: “Any number of other bad things could happen while Dr. Gilbert is in charge, so rather than take any chances, let’s get rid of him.”
