Sure, it's easy to dismiss some of this as a fairly standard cultural response to new technology and to shifting cultural norms. Many of these fears echo those we've heard about other, older technologies - video games, the television, the phonograph, the telephone.

And yet the stakes do seem much higher now, in part because of the speed with which information can travel. A message - or more damning, a photo - can go viral, spreading gossip far beyond the school grounds or the local community.

Nowhere are we seeing that play out more than with sexting. And the media hubbub surrounding Anthony Weiner aside, it's been teens and sexting that has stirred up the most frenzy. At ReadWriteWeb's 2WAY Summit this week in New York, researcher danah boyd discussed teen sexting and its impact on the tech industry. (You can read her notes from her talk here.)

Teen sexting vexes us, of course, because of the technology. Darn those teenagers and their rampant texting! Oh, and of course, the easy virality of these intimate photos. But it's also a social or cultural problem: we like to pretend that teens aren't sexual. And finally - and here's where it can be devastating even beyond the rapid spread of personal photographs - teen sexting is often a crime. Because of child pornography laws, sexual photos of underage minors can result in a criminal record and/or being on a sexual predator list for the kids involved.

And it can - and probably will, predicts boyd - be a big problem for technology companies. After all, it is a crime to host child pornography. And while the adage of "I know pornography when I see it" is often bandied about, it really is quite complicated when it comes to material related to teens and sexting. How old are the participants? How explicit is the content? What was the intention behind the image's creation? Behind the image's sharing?

boyd offered no answers and no clear plan forward for the tech industry. "Sexting represents a trainwreck where policies and politics have collided with the tech industry in the most uncomfortable ways possible. And not because the tech industry is trying to misbehave but because no one has the perfect solution."

Hopes: Kids As Makers, Not Just Consumers

On Day 2 of the RWW2WAY Summit, I moderated a panel that, in almost all ways, could not have been more different than danah boyd's talk. The panel examined what we can learn from kids imagining and building the future of technology, and I was joined by Steven Muskin from Latitude Research, Vanessa Van Petten from Radical Parenting magazine, and Andrés Monroy-Hernández, a PhD Candidate at MIT and creator of the online community around the programming language Scratch.

Van Petten discussed the ways in which kids who are growing up around technology have a new social e-literacy, but one that could easily be deemed social illiteracy by adults. She also noted the way in which technology and identity go hand-in-hand for kids - the ways in which they imagine (and often hope) that people see them. "I am one YouTube video away from a million people seeing me," said one of Van Petten's informants.

In order to help kids be better prepared for a technological future, Van Petten said we need to help emphasize both online and offline social literacy skills and encourage kids to appreciate quality, mastery, and depth.

Mushkin talked about the vision of that technology future as imagined by kids. You can see some of the drawings that kids created when asked to depict the future of technology here. But it's clear in these pictures, as with the research that Van Patten described, that we need to have a place for kids to create and not just consume technology.

Perhaps there is no better example of this than Scratch, the visual programming language created at MIT. Scratch allows anyone to build animations and video games, and over 1.8 million projects have been created and shared on the site's online community. That community was the creation of Monroy-Hernandez, who spoke about the kids' reactions to having their projects remixed via the site. Scratch projects are all openly licensed, which means you can download and utilize others' code and creations in your Scratch projects. It was interesting to hear about what kids thought were the appropriate ethics around sharing and attribution.

The Missing Piece: Kids' Voices

"How can we empower kids to be builders and makers?" asked Monroy-Hernandez. That's a question we need to keep in mind, not just in terms of programming skills or creative vision, but in terms of kids' wants and needs.

Often, when we talk about technology - whether we're focusing on the hopes or the fears - it's the adults' wants and needs that are often expressed. We want technology that helps kids score higher on the SATs, for example. We want technology that helps them stay in closer contact with parents. We want technology that's safe and secure (and desexualized).

And so the question remains: how can we create a space in the tech industry, in the classroom, and at home to have kids build the tech tools they want and need? This is their future, after all.

There were a few caveats to the use of these new apps, however. And oddly enough, there was no mention of an iPhone application.

According to the blog post, which set out to "make official" the BBC's plans in this area, the new native app for iPad is a major improvement over the original iPad experience -  essentially just a website designed for the iPad. The new app takes better advantage of the touchscreen user interface, says the BBC, which is a popular feature on the "iPad-ified" website.

Both the iPad app and Android app will offer live TV streams and radio, the latter which was never before available to mobile devices.

Mobile users can also access the full BBC catalog of "catch-up" programs (TV you may have missed), seven days' worth of TV and radio on demand and the "series stacking" feature that's also available on the Web, this last item being a feature that allows viewers to watch older programs from selected series up until the series has ended.

On Android: Froyo-Only, Flash Required

On Android, the iPlayer app will not be available for all devices, only on those running the Android 2.2 ("Froyo") version of the mobile operating system and Adobe Flash 10.1. This is because the player's Flash streams require "a powerful mobile phone processor and a Wi-Fi connection," says the BBC.

But as some may remember, an unofficial iPlayer app called myPlayer had arrived in the Android Market (before being booted out), but it did not require Flash. The speculation is that BBC had to implement the streaming service in Flash because of content provider pressure, not technical requirements. Content providers are concerned about pirating - that same fear is why the Netflix application for Android has not yet launched either. As stated by Netflix on its blog back in November:

"The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android. The same security issues that have led to piracy concerns on the Android platform have made it difficult for us to secure a common Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on these devices."

But rumor has it, Netflix isn't going with a Flash requirement, but has been working with chipset maker Qualcomm on implementing specific technology like SecureMSM to get the Netflix app approved.

Where's the iPhone App? And What About the Global Audience?

What's odd about this iPlayer news is that the mobile applications will arrive for Android and iPad, but not the iPhone. For iPhone users, there is still the Apple-friendly HTML5 website. Of course, a native app would have its advantages. So, what's the status of the iPhone application, everyone wants to know? Here, the BBC clarifies nothing.

For those outside the U.K. pining for access to British TV, there is some good news. Although not addressed via this blog post, BBC.com's managing director Luke Bradley-Jones told the audience at the Digital TV Summit that the company will launch  a "global" iPlayer this year whose content would be available via subscription.

Hopefully, the BBC will consider a native iPhone application for that time, too.

The latest company thought to be readying its own Internet TV set-top box plans is Blockbuster, according to Hollywood Reporter. The new “set-top device for streaming films directly to TV sets” could be announced as early as this month, and would utilize the company’s recent acquisition of online movie service Movielink, giving users access to over 3,000 film titles from major Hollywood studios Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros. and MGM.

BBC iPlayer lands on Wii - who said Nintendo doesn’t do media center?

A version of the BBC’s iPlayer will be made available on Nintendo’s Wii, announced the UK public broadcaster’s Future Media and Technology chief Erik Huggers during a keynote speech at the MipTV-Milia conference in Cannes. The move marks the first time the iPlayer will be available on a games console, and perhaps surprisingly, not one designed specifically to be a media center. So much for the ‘trojan horse into the living room’ strategies of Sony’s PS3 and Microsoft’s XBox 360.

Babelgum commissions feature-length environmental documentary

Internet TV platform Babelgum has always pitched itself as serving the interests of independent video producers who want to find and connect with niche audiences. By tapping into the Long Tail, the company maintains it’s possible to “find an audience that rivals or exceeds the mainstream TV audience in any local market.” However, Babelgum has now crossed a line, moving away from being purely a content distributor to also commissioning original and exclusive content of its own. Last month, the company announced plans to set up a $10+ million production fund, telling Variety that Babelgum was “transforming into a digital media studio.” The first of those commissions is thought to be a feature-length environmental documentary about the threatened Athabasca Oil Sands region in Alberta, Canada.