New Media, Life and Work Online
I’ll let the content speak for itself.
The video:
The article: Scatological attack on Stephen Harper’s record goes viral
The awesome website that, believe it or not, doesn’t even scratch the surface: ShitHarperDid.com.
Beware of a public with tools to create its own media.
Pardon the inflammatory title, but I think people are missing the point with the latest “jailbraking”, lawsuit and Anonymous-action debacle with Sony.
Quick summary:
A guy buys a Playstation 3. He then plays with the internal workings of the machine in order to get it to do even more stuff than it could before. Sony sues him for it… an action that, frankly, is hard to morally justify even if you can show paperwork that makes it legal to do so. Anonymous attacks Sony websites and starts harassing Sony executives.
In case you missed it: Sony is suing him for modifying a product that he owns. He didn’t “license” or “lease” or “rent” that product. He owns it. Apparently, that doesn’t mean what it used to, because even though he owns that product he isn’t allowed to do with it as he pleases. That’s like a food manufacturer suing you for distributing a unique recipe, or an auto part manufacturer suing you for using car parts in a different brand car.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Ars Technica recently covered the story with a focus on how people have been able to get information on these executives. To me, this focus is completely uninteresting. Detectives have been able to get personal information on other people since before electricity was discovered, and always will.
Others have focused on the specific actions of Anonymous, and whether “they” went “too far”. That’s a fun philosophical debate if you really want to kill a few hours, but doesn’t actually have anything to do with what happens next.
That’s the key: what happens next?
This latest round of attacks by “Anonymous”, the general banner for “whatever random people got ticked off enough to target Sony executives for being a bunch of jackasses”, is becoming par for the course. You can’t stop it. Anonymous isn’t an organization. It’s just the phenomena of a bunch of people acting out. They don’t know each other, they don’t “keep in touch”, and there is no leader. YOU are Anonymous.
So, if a corporation tries to hurt random people, the members of that corporation can expect backlash. This is the world we live in.
While I’m not crazy about “mob mentality” or “mob rule”, I understand why it’s starting to happen. After Enron demonstrated to the world that corporate executives are above the law even when they seriously harm people, the notion of random people being sued for doing things that hurt people only in the vaguest and most esoteric sense is more than the average Netizen is ready to handle. People who do real harm are immune to punishment, and people who do largely theorhetical harm are lynched by the system.
Since there is no government mechanism for maintaining the balance, mob rule rises.
I don’t have a solution to the problem, but I do know that we’ll see more and more of this. It will go a bit further every time. Executives responsible for random smack-downs on the public can expect more and more backlash.
For those of us that have nothing to do with this conflict on either side, expect to be caught in the crossfire. You will be able to do less on the Internet tomorrow than you can today in order to keep executives safe from being held accountable by Anonymous. Corporate services you wanted to use will go down occasionally due to Anonymous attacks. The trend will continue.
The solution? Maybe more transparency in the corporate structure, more accountability… or maybe a completely new model under which to build a business. Ah, but this is my stop folks… I’m not really the “ingenious solutions” guy, just the “understanding what the hell is going on” guy.
Everybody loves fantasy, but nobody likes to be made a fool.
When I blogged about Spiral Moon Media Inc.’s recent viral attempt, I left it about as ambiguous as the company itself left things. Is this for real, or is this a prank? What’s going on here?
The difficulty is that people are going to get angry. If a person sees the video, spends time thinking about how stupid this whole thing is, and then discovers that it was just an ad for Spiral Moon Media, there’s a reaction at that moment. What you WANT is: “Gee, that’s great! I’ll hire them!”
In the case of the “Share The Air” viral campaign, I don’t think that’s the reaction being generated. I try not too swear too much on this blog so I won’t type out what people’s reactions are.
Take, by way of contrast, Opulence, I has it:
Dogs playing poker. Gold grapes. A miniature giraffe. Plus, as an added bonus, an entire hoax website for Sokoblovsky Farms, “Russia’s finest purveyors of petite lap giraffes.”
The website itself has gone viral, and people find it completely awesome whether or not they think it’s real. But… why?
When you “peek behind the curtain” and see the wizard back there, you smile and laugh along with him. He wasn’t trying to trick you. Rather, he was putting on a show for your benefit. This was about you, not him. More to the point:
This is true whether they are, in fact, smart or stupid. It’s also true if they actually believed the deception or not.
Also see The North American House Hippo:
Respect the audience at all costs folks.
Hmm. This has to be the cutest blog post I’ve ever done.
What follows is entirely impractical. Those of you who have come to rely on this blog for the pragmatic and practical take on technological innovation may want to skip what follows.
What got me off topic today was our book club. We’re currently reading one of my favorite novels: “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” by Cory Doctorow. (Read it for free here.)
It got me thinking about something called “the singularity” again. This is a term first coined by Ray Kurzweil to describe the point in the near future when the pace technological innovation becomes, for all intents and purposes, infinite. Here’s a short video describing one aspect of the phenomenon:
THE IMMORTALISTS – a short film by Jason Silva
Immortality is within our grasp. Yes, for real. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Sadly, there’s a catch. Even when humanity is smart, we’re still horrible at dealing with each other. Sooner or later someone will decide that what the world really needs is a good apocalypse.
After all, in an age where the pace of technological innovation is infinite, you’ll have about three dozen cheap and easy ways to end all human life listed on six dozen popular blogs.
It could be that this phenomena of knowing that anyone could end it all at any moment might be the new way people come to live with death. For a time, mankind won’t be fearing their own deaths, but rather the end of all civilization.
What will finally end it, of course, will be those who try to prevent the end from coming. As organizations are formed to lock down the “dangerous” information or censor “dangerous” people, there will be a backlash from people objecting to being controlled. The schism between the opposing points of view will rise until eventually it produces someone who can’t stand an eternity of humanity being controlled in this way.
So they’ll end it for all of us.
When people make guesses as to how the world might end, they usually point at natural phenomena or ecological disaster. I’m putting $50 on the singularity. Any takers?
I find myself adopting the role of debunker and myth-breaker lately. Yet another “nobody takes virtual worlds seriously” message from a tech blogger. (IT guys… sheesh…) I’m not quite ready to make further announcements about Virtual Worlds Keynote, so how to address this?
Tell you what, its been a few days since I hit the news reader. Let’s see what kind of highlights I can pull out:
Design goes digital in Second Life
Architecture & Design does a big writeup on the recent unveiling of the National Portrait Gallery’s virtual world rendering.
The Virtual Whirl: Community guide to Virtual Worlds
Massively (an AOL property) opens a new section specifically for “virtual environments”.
WV University Creates Virtual Campus on Second Life
Marshall University joins hundreds of other universities in creating a virtual campus.
Avatars of Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Pawlenty, McCain, McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Pence, Dobson, DeMint, Perry, Steele, and Others Virtually Descending on U.S. Capitol
Haiti support via some tiny paper-doll avatars, demonstrating that it doesn’t matter how non-immersive the environment, avatars still matter…
EA Joins VanEdge Venture Fund
Fresh VC cash to be had for virtual world builders.
Phoenix NAP Launches Virtual Data Center Tour
Pheonix NAP takes a cue from IBM and creates a sales tour / orientation space to help people understand their product better. See video:
Telepresence: Tandberg & Polycom Shine as Mid-Market & Small Business Interests — Event Platforms Look to Integrate with Mid-Tier Vide
Teleconferencing integration with virtual worlds is proving to be a great success, according to analysts.
Tool places learners in virtual world
Language education via a virtual environment called “RendezVu” gets an award.
Prototyping Environment in SL for Dow Chemical: Three Questions with Robert Emory from Scott & Miller Group
Dow Chemical creates a prototype environment. See video below.
ISN Virtual Worlds Rolling Out Platform For Elderly, Disabled
The Oasis Foundation creates an environment aimed at the elderly and disabled to provide education and training.
Building a 3D workspace
Hypergrid Business summarizes the history of technology and interface design, various studies, and shows how it all points to a virtual environment exceeding the efficiency of a real-world environment.
AI Learning Center Being Built in Second Life
IEEE moves its critical training in AI to the virtual environment.
That’s just four random days, two of which were a Saturday and Sunday. Please please puh-lease can we stop loudly proclaiming “I haven’t been paying attention so it must not exist” in the press now?
Thank you.