One of the kids I've met on IRC and admire, seems both very mature for his age (I think he's 14), incredibly clueful about adult stuff, and still very fun. He's been learning Perl, he jokes a lot, has had several girlfriends, and does fun stuff that I remember as a kid.

On the other hand, a certain underage girl I met on IRC (back when she turned 15), seems immature, very "heavy" for her age (i.e: takes life too seriously and does not have a lot of fun), and miserable. She's been raised as a Catholic and home-schooled and while a Linux geek, seemed very lonely. She also seemed to know the basic facts about sex, science, etc.

They are both from the USA although the boy is from Louisiana and the girl is from Pennsylvania. They both enjoyed this story of mine - http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/human-hacking/ - that talks about high-school teenagers in early 2000's Los Angeles. The girl, on the other hand, thought that it was real and said that she would really like to meet one of the characters there. While I feel flattered that I'm a good writer, it has many non-realistic elements in it.

In any case, what I meant to say was that you have a point that people can stay innocent while knowing a lot. I believe I stayed innocent and a child at heart. By child at heart I don't mind that I'm immature, just that I'm excited about life, am not sarcastic, am open-minded, despise Fatalistic attitudes (including PG's), and believe that people are essentially good. However, I feel that I've matured and became "wiser" and more knowledgeable as time went by, which is why I don't wish to be younger.

So I think it's not knowledge that makes us less innocent, but rather how we conceive it. A programmer/translator friend I talked to claimed that open-source and the Creative Commons were "Socialism". I tried to explain to him that by sharing intellectual artworks, including code, you didn't really became deprived of them, like Marxism suggests of switching from "Everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their needs." . It didn't convince him and he insisted it was still sacrificing profits.

Eventually, I settled it with the other Perl mongers by saying that it doesn't matter if open-source is communism or socialism or whatever, as long as we all know and agree that it is good for the people.

I'm the kind of person, who like a child believes that rules and conventions are not set in stone and should be analysed, challenged, and possibly disobeyed. As such, I am anti-conformist, write screenplays for fun (including Friends and Star Trek fan art), write controversial essays, which challenge things that are considered truisms, and also often pass negative (but still constructive) criticism on people (probably privately) about negative patterns I have detected in them, so hopefully they'll improve.

I have seen and heard of a lot of evil things, including people who treated me with cruelty, but I know that most people are and want to be good. Despite being an Israeli, I even met several Iranians online who were very friendly, and a Pakistani-in-origin, who while kinda implied that Israel was the mortal enemy of Pakistan, still treated me with respect, and was also kind enough to copy-edit one of my essays, and give me many useful corrections.