That's basically what he told his employee in a Sky News Interview, excerpted above:

Q: You could choose not to be on their search engine... so when someone runs a search your websites won't come up.


A: Well, I think we will... when we start charging.

This is certainly technically possible; all it takes is one correctly-placed text file to tell Google to ignore some or all of a website. And who knows, Murdoch's armies of lawyers and lobbyists might even succeed in effecting the other drastic change he mentioned: rolling back the entire doctrine of fair use, an interpretation of copyright law that allows the sort of quoting and selective reproduction of content that Murdoch's newspapers and TV networks engage in every day.

This isn't the first time Murdoch, 78, and his lieutenants have been made unfriendly noises about Google; they've recently attacked the search engine as a "parasite" with "promiscuous" users. This hostility must seem perfectly sensible if you're an old man who has your secretary find and print up Web pages on your behalf. But here's a pro tip, Rupert: Old media doesn't instant message those pages to your assistant's Twitter, via Blogger, on AOL. She just does what your newspaper reporters and Fox News producers and sales executives and tabloid editors and attack-dog flacks and mid-level accountants do all the time every day: Sticks a hot, throbbing search query into Google and gets busy with a bunch of strange website she doesn't subscribe to. Welcome to the internet.

A spot on the microblogging service's Suggested User List of accounts for new users has helped Daniel Brusilovsky reach just under 120,000 followers. He's also been officially "Verified" by Twitter Inc., lest someone impersonate the powerful 16-year-old. His influence at the microblogging startup apparently runs deep: he's meeting with Twitter's COO, right now.

At TechCrunch, he's a writer who dabbles in events and business development. He's also the young face of video-casting service Qik and CEO of his own TeensInTech.com. Oh, and he advises at least two other companies.

Brusilovsky's quick ascent contains lessons for the more aged and less accomplished:

• Don't fit in? Perfect! Brusilovsky was "the only one who needed his parents to pick him up from" a tech conference last year, according to GigaOM. The intervening year has only brought more mainstream success, like joining TechCrunch in June and getting the Twitter stamp of approval.
• Form a community of similar misfits. TeensInTech is a site for young people as terrifyingly ambitious and energetic as Brusilovsky. They're coming for us all. Soon.
• "Don't give up." That one's from Brusilovsky. And we do not question Brusilovsky.

Let's just hope this promising kid finishes school and goes on to college. Just because Bill Gates, the founders of Google, the founders of Twitter and the founder of Oracle all dropped out of school doesn't mean it pays, kid.

(Pic by Andrew Mager)

"Younger employees help senior executives unlock social media mystery," declares a Chicago Tribune headline [via PRNewser]. What is this amazing mystery that has been unlocked? For Edelman—the world's largest independent PR firm, and one that loves to market itself as a "digital" expert that will help you, the corporation, navigate the wilds of the internet for a large, large fee—the mystery is, "How can we get people to pay us so much for this shit?"

"I am so all over this Delish thing," Cabot bubbled, punching up delish.com on her computer in her office at Edelman, a Chicago-based public relations firm.

"Oh, you're doing so well!" Spohn said delightedly, counting the recipes Cabot had collected on the food lovers' Web site. "Look, you've got so much!"

Her pride was as evident as the exchange was notable. Though Cabot, 56, is Edelman's central region president with more than 30 years in the business, she is the student. Spohn, a 23-year-old account executive on the firm's digital team, is the teacher.

Hahaha. Do you see what is going on here? Edelman, like many of its peers, is a PR firm that will charge your company a hefty fee for all the digital insight that its 23-year-old account executives can deliver. Because the people in charge aren't really so good on this "internet" thing. Which would be fine if they were not the same people in charge of convincing you, the client, to spend tens (or hundreds!) of thousands of dollars with Edelman for their expert strategic online influencing services. Their mentoring program for the olds is called "Rotnem" because that's "mentor" backwards and you must be a backwards-ass fool to pay money to a bunch of 23-year-olds to teach you how to make a Facebook page and shit at an Edelman markup, when you could get them off Craigslist for much, much cheaper.

"Edelman strongly advocates that companies participate with and engage online influencers." Did you know that Edelman, a massive corporate PR firm, started a blog called "Authenticities"? Edelman, how much do people pay you for your services? Because I am totally going to undercut your prices by one dollar, once the last media outlet finally stops paying employees. Please engage.

[Pic of Edelman's Global Head of Digital Strategy via Flickr]

Though she once praised Twitter, Lacy has since become disillusioned by the amount of skin-centric span that's clogging her and her friends' feeds. Yes, there are ways to block the site's cabal of sluts, but Lacy argues it's far too hard, so she's offering Twitter her own advice — and knocks Tila Tequila in the process:

There's no reason why Twitter shouldn't be catching spam, or at least making it easier to report.

Unless, of course, Twitter wants to be the new MySpace (NWS). After all, a lot of that site's early growth came from call girls, strippers, and purveyors of porn. Tila Tequila, who has been pictured in Playboy, Penthouse, and other publications, even got an MTV show out of MySpace.... If Twitter wants growth for the sake of growth, porn will do that.

But knowing the founders, my guess is that the site doesn't want that kind of success. Lewd content helped hobble MySpace's advertising efforts.

With The Olds leading the Twitter revolution, Lacy insists the site do something about this madness or face the consequences. But we say there's a far easier solution: don't "follow" or click on links to people you don't know, especially if they have whorish names like "Kiki" or "Cocoa" or feature pictures of bikini-covered breasts.

Even if Lacy and other worried people do leave the site, it shows no signs of slowing down, especially since a federal judge just launched a page that educates kids on civics and DePaul University is offering a class all about the site. If anything, Lacy's arguments will only help the site: you're nobody until somebody tries to stir up a frenzy of "family values" outrage.

British insurance company Legal & General recently published a scary-sounding report called "The Digital Criminal" which asserts users of Facebook et al. are opening themselves up to disaster, like burglars.

You know, because burglars can see when and where you're on vacation, then find your home, break in, steal your stuff, pee on your toilet seat and overfeed your fish. Then you come back and you're shit's gone, your toilet's sticky, your fish is dead and you kick yourself, "Why did I tweet myself in the foot?"

Considering all the dangers lurking in — and, apparently, out — of the internet, Legal & General and other insurance companies are talking about raising rates for those who indulge in virtual networking. Still, they admit it's not so black and white:

Malcolm Cooper, director of pricing and underwriting at Legal & General, said: "It's a challenging one for the insurance industry. Just because someone is burgled, you can't prove that it's down to details posted on Facebook.

"It could be that we start asking how many youngsters are in the home for example."

Cooper obviously hasn't heard that it's not the young one who are responsible for the silly Twitter boom. It's The Olds! Although, we admit, his rationale does make a good argument for selling one's ingrate children.

Don't get us wrong. Not everyone on the microblogging service wants for real-life social interaction. Celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey get invited to plenty of hot parties, and use Twitter more for self promotion than anything else.

But the rest of us? We're old people — a.k.a. adults — who don't actually see each other as often as we'd like. We've got significant others, kids, and — if the economy has been kind to us — time-consuming, energy-sapping jobs. And old mature farts don't have a huge cache of beer-chugging party photos to upload to Facebook, or hours to spend indulging in-depth symmetrical relationships on that social network.

Hence, Twitter. It's not a supplement to a social life; it is a replacement social life. It's no accident that the site was started by thirtysomething programmers and technical book authors, and that some of it's earlies adopters were freelance writers, some of the loneliest people on the planet. Which isn't to say this core constituency makes Twitter any less interesting, or worthwhile. If anything, it's the reverse; what was the last pop culture trend created by shut-in adults?

(Pic: Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, a programmer whose social life appears quite active in the wake of his creation. By Joi Ito.)

Some of these guys really deserve their own entries on Old People Talking About the Internet, the Tumblr about olds befuddled by the interwebs. Suffice it to say, Twitter illiteracy is miles from being the most cringeworthy aspect of the inbred DC press corps. Still, we couldn't help being amused at the repeated slams at Twitter for being "narcissistic;" that's pretty rich coming from people who basically spend all day circle jerking on current affairs TV shows and chewing their own cud in various syndicated columns.

Not that everyone's detestable. We'd totally adopt gentle-hearted Christian Science Monitor reporter Gail Russell Chaddock and her "Twitter line" if we could.

This obviously didn't go very well as Spacey, who posted a tweet to his Twitter page during the demonstration, got this response from Letterman after he'd concluded his tutorial: "You know what it reminds me of? Oh yeah, a waste of time!"

The trend piece doesn't even get into voicemail, which we've established everyone but old people hates. But it explores the clash between people who text too much and too little. Elizabeth Fishkin, an advertising professional, thought she was a big texter, and dumped a guy who ignored her text messages, until she met a Twitter fanatic:

Nothing obsessive, maybe five times a day — she just likes the ease, the directness, the speed of the medium. Texting is her language.

"I thought, if this is going to be such an issue . . . " she says.

Months later: another date, another guy, another technological incompatibility. This time she was out with someone who wanted to text . . . everyone.

"He kept talking about Twitter." Fishkin rolls her eyes. "Ashton Kutcher. Twitter, Twitter, Twitter."

And what did it mean when Mary, the Drew Barrymore character in He's Just Not That Into You, got asked out via MySpace? That would be a dealbreaker for Marc Houston, another young single profiled in the story:

"No cellphone?" Houston cannot fathom a relationship like this. He would never, for example, date someone who refused to text. And someone who was still on MySpace instead of Facebook? "Oh, that would be an automatic reject," Houston says. "It's kind of like a unibrow." He pauses. "Maybe that's why I'm single."

Yes, that sounds about right. This story isn't really about technology. It's about neurotic thirtysomethings who will find some reason not to be in a relationship. And perhaps that's for the best: If you can't even agree on the medium through which you'll communicate, is there any chance you'll ever be able to work through real issues?

For NASA, DTN means not having to send exact signals at an exact time to a spacecraft. A missed connection can be tried again until it succeeds. If you've been around long enough, it sounds conspicuously like USENET back in the acoustic-modem days. NASA touts the technology's usefulness in communicating with deep-space robotic craft. Who are they kidding? The real win is that when human beings inevitably go back into space, they'll be able to keep up on Earthbound puppycams. (Illustration by NASA)

In a good example of NASA's goal of "faster, cheaper, better," commercially developed, commonly available equipment was used to build this new computer at a fraction of the price it would cost to build a specialized computer designed specifically for the spaceflight environment.

Science from UCLA now suggests that searching the Internet a lot, for years and years, is measurably good for your brain. Awesome! I'm glad to learn I haven't been giving myself brain damage since 1981. To celebrate, I used the Internet to find out how many people are on UCLA's media team pushing that study. I miss the old days, when they'd have bought me lunch.

From a 2000 Boston Globe article:

McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes.

From a July New York Times interview:

Q: What websites if any do you look at regularly?

Mr. McCain: Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously, everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics, sometimes. [NOTE: He means RealClearPolitics.]

(Mrs. McCain and Ms. Buchanan both interject: “Meagan’s blog!”)

Mr. McCain: Excuse me, Meagan’s blog. And we also look at the blogs from Michael and from you that may not be in the newspaper, that are just part of your blog.

Q: But do you go on line for yourself?

Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.

Q: Do you use a blackberry or email?

Mr. McCain: No

Mark Salter: He uses a BlackBerry, just ours.

Mr. McCain: I use the Blackberry, but I don’t e-mail, I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail. I read e-mails all the time, but the communications that I have with my friends and staff are oral and done with my cell phone. I have the luxury of being in contact with them literally all the time. We now have a phone on the plane that is usable on the plane, so I just never really felt a need to do it. But I do – could I just say, really – I understand the impact of blogs on American politics today and political campaigns. I understand that. And I understand that something appears on one blog, can ricochet all around and get into the evening news, the front page of The New York Times. So, I do pay attention to the blogs. And I am not in any way unappreciative of the impact that they have on entire campaigns and world opinion.

Q: You read newspapers then.

Mr. McCain: I read them most all every day.

(Photo by AP/Mary Altaffer)