Norms and Responsibilities

What User rights should become the norm?
While this analogy of the digital frontier being much like the Western Frontier is useful; one significant difference is that this digital frontier has come to our doorstep.  Unlike the explorers and settlers who chose to set out with useful tools and support, not all of us are standing in these whirlwind times with the necessary tools and support in hand.  Perhaps this new frontier is more like an invasive alien species that we will all just have to learn to deal with.  
That said, our generation is finding itself in a state of lawlessness because it lacks the ethical, social, legal and educational structures that we have been creating for the last few thousand years.  We need to understand that this digital world is a very dynamic, ever-changing place.  Whatever structure we do develop will need to be adaptive.  Einstein once offered an important insight in regards to this phenomena.  “The world that we have made, as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far, creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them.”
If you think about it; are food, water and shelter direct things you have access to within digital world? No, they are secondarily obtained through information such as money transfer, privacy and our access to the things that affect our personal identity are essential.  We need to be able to see how we are being perceived; otherwise, slander may occur without our knowing it.  Something far more dangerous than small-town gossip.  
So what rights should become the norm?  Access to the educational tools and support systems are not merely a luxury, they are a necessity.  And just as a child learns language over a period of time, that child needs to be fluent in this language as well.  The idea of having a “digital driver’s license” is an important one because it acknowledges the need for people to be held accountable for the responsibilities that come with freedoms.  Character education also flows along this same line as an important element.  Teaching etiquette is so very important if our society is going to maintain all that we have so far created within our “moral fabric”.  While such ideas fall under the vague and fuzzy veil of subjectivity; I believe that there always has been an intuitive baseline that we know and understand.  While there is much work to be done to incorporate what we have already built as a “civilized” society; we must remember that we have millions of brilliant, creative minds and thousands of years of evolution to work with.