Snippet: Ultra-Orthodox Judaism and the Internet ☇

If The Verge’s Paul Miller’s leaving the Internet produces interesting stories like this, rather than the usual tech pieces, I’m all for that (via 512 Pixels):

In order to get an outsider’s perspective on the event, the next day I called up Avi Greengart, an analyst on consumer technology for Current Analysis who I bump into often at tech events. He also happens to be a modern-Orthodox Jew (doesn’t wear the black suit), meaning he wasn’t invited to the rally, though he’d heard of it through the internet.

Avi agreed that the rally’s aims don’t extend to an attempt to control the rest of society: “They’re not trying to shut down the internet, they’re trying to be sure their followers are able to adhere to a strict lifestyle that includes as little of the outside world as possible.”

He said the event was promoted in the Jewish community as an admission by rabbinical leadership that simply banning the internet wasn’t going to work anymore, and so the rally would offer practical ways to filter and deal with it. I had heard similar things in my ride up, although my non-religious Jewish friends had typically described it as “that rally against the internet.” Early in the event, I heard some concessions being made to the necessity of the internet, but the side-along condemnation grew as the event progressed.