Reading: from Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, chapter 1: It Takes a Village to Find a Phone
The website Evan Guttman created is still up (though it looks like he’s taken down Sasha Gomez’s picture). Are you interested in knowing more about the story? Here’s a link to the New York Times account. I’d like to know how you felt reading about it. Were you, like Shirky, troubled or like Evan did you find the story pleasingly just? How did you feel about Evan, about Sasha? Does Sasha being 16, Puerto Rican or a single mother matter to how you feel about the story? What are other examples you can think of of viral organizing or flash mobs? How do you think someone makes an event like this happen?
Shirky ends his telling of the story with the question “What happens next?” What do you think has happened with social media over the past few years?
And here’s an article by Malcolm Gladwell from The New Yorker arguing a different viewpoint. Will the revolution be tweeted?
(Note: You don’t have to answer all these questions. Just choose something to write about. See you Wednesday.)
I think that the recent changes made in the last couple of years in relation to social media are revolutionary and have drastically changed the way we communicate with each other. The social network tools we have are limitless but what worries me most is how we utilize them and for what reasons. Big companies are using them for commercialization and pure profit. Everyday people use them for maintaining friendships, dating purposes and some for the pursuit of their 15 minutes of fame. The resources are readily available to change the world but it’s people who still have to change. Any technology or tool can be useful but when it lands in the hands of someone with ill intent it can be dangerous. I think as a society we must reevaluate our values and make sure we don’t comprise them. We all have an ethical responsibility to ourselves and others but they tend to be checked at the door when the incentive of money, fame, or success are being dangled in front of us. I think it’s crucial that we make sure that technology does not end up controlling our lives or making things worse. While in fact, its actual purpose was to improve the quality of our lives.
After reading this story, it made me realize how easy people can come together and organize for a specific cause with the help of technology. Complete strangers from all walks of life and countries are instantly connected through the web. It has become a very powerful tool, as we saw in the story. It reminded me of the recent uprisings in the Middle East. People who organized through social networks like Twitter have over thrown governments. Viral organizing can be beneficial for a just cause and fighting for change and freedom. On the other hand, its power is somewhat scary because it is difficult to regulate what people do on the web. I wonder if this type of technology was available 50 years, how different things might have been especially during the civil rights movement and Chicano/a movement.
Its funny you should mention regulation Sara because I came across this petition which is linked to a bill in Congress where as the email from change.org claims that “they’re debating right now [over a bill that] would give the government power to shut down whole websites, and even let corporations say which websites should be shut down.” Here is the petition if you would like to read a little more about it: http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-electronic-arts-to-oppose-internet-censorship
Your comment reminded me of it and just wanted to share it with you. But yes definitely the movements probably would of been a lot different if social networking was a tool available to them. But either way they were able to make a change. So it goes to show we have more than just the internet.
After reading the story I could not believe how much trouble Evan went through to get to the phone. I am very interested in what his answer would be for the purpose of that big of an effort to get to the phone worth less than all his work and investigation. It does however, also highlight the great impact that technology has in our lives as stated before and as mentioned in class, this source of technology is part of history-making because what goes up on the web will always be there for the world to see. The internet has many benefits to it but it can also have its repercussions.
There is a purpose for why you decided to have this as our first reading of the semester: this reading speaks to the power of organizing by using resources that are a click away (on the internet). I agree, that things did get out of hand with Evan’s obsession. I think we can all agree that Sasha, a 16 year old mother, shouldn’t have kept a phone she found but I feel she became a victim from all the organizing that happened. My first impressions as I was reading “It Takes A Village to Find A Phone” was that I could not believe there was so much search for a phone, especially because it wasn’t Evan’s phone but his friend’s. It just made me think about the powers that exist within classes. Evan, more of a middle class person, had more time to spend online blogging, replying to the hundreds of e-mails and posts he was receiving as oppose to the lack of leisure time someone from a lower class would have. Evan should have been the adult in this situation, after all Sasha was a 16 year old who thought it would be easy to keep the phone. It’s frightening to see how information (public and private) can get out of handle once it is already out on the internet.
I don’t think Sasha being a single mother or Puerto Rican is relevant. I think keeping the phone was wrong. I can see someone keeping a phone they found if had no contact information in it. Since they contacted her to return it, and she didn’t, I think that she was in the wrong. I’m just glad it didn’t end in physical violence. Other viral movements that I can think of are the ones by the group Anonymous and the people on 4Chan.org who go to the extreme to get payback on people. The people on 4chan.org bothered one girl so much that she ended up in the hospital. I found it disturbing that the random people would drive past Sasha’s place. I’m just glad that it didn’t end in violence. You just never know what people will do. Like others have said this situation will follow both of them for a long time. For Evan, it allowed him to get public relations work, but I wonder how this will affect Sasha when it comes to looking for jobs. Will she always be seen as a teenager that made one mistake or will she eventually outgrow the perception of her that was created by all of this?
After reading this article I did find the story troubling because of all the harassment, verbal abuse, and the age difference between Evan and Sasha. Sasha was a 16 year old single mom, who took at most a 300 dollar phone and it caused such a riot. I felt Evan had too much time on his hands and he over reacted setting up a site for a friends silent phone, not even his own. However Sasha could have done the right think and returned it but she was immature and naive. I have sympathy for Sasha she has her whole life ahead of her and it may all come to a hault because of this scandle. For this kind of website to get such an audience, the creator had to be well educated in website design and have many followers that then would send the link to more of their own friends. Only in today’s society is this possible to stalk and almost bully a person over the Internet. Sasha was 16 year old girl who made a mistake and everyone I believe deserves a second chance.
Sasha’s age, the fact that she is a single mother, and her nationality definitely affect my view of the story, especially since Evan let his website get out of hand in terms of how his audience responded to it. It isn’t fair that a young girl has to go through that kind of humiliation and invasion of her privacy via the internet simply over a phone, stolen or not. Although the authorities didn’t respond accordingly, the idea of a man like Evan taking matters into his own hands can often have more repercussions than a simple arrest. For example, the racial slurs that emerged from the audience’s comments was something I saw coming as soon as I read that Evan had opened up his website for user comments as well as posted the pictures Sasha had taken on the phone.
Having been part of a much smaller internet community (compared to Facebook that is) in which one or two people are at the head of it, I actually witnessed the power of a small group of people over the internet and how easily they can gather information about the most obscure subjects. This also brings back the idea that Shirky described at the end of chapter one that “it takes a village.” The level of invasion of privacy, more than anything was what got me the most since it was over the line and overwhelming had I been in that situation with hundreds of people I don’t know, knowing my address.
To say that the general internet community is very insensitive when it comes to issues of race and minor drama is exemplified in user comments seen on YouTube and Twitter, and news or magazine websites where users are allowed to post their opinions. These same people knew very well Sasha’s face, and her home address which was easily accessible. It was until that point that I realized that in the story I was reading, the methods that Evan used had gone too far. I agree with Gladwell that it was certainly over the top, as well as wit Shirky that this may have been too much for a $300 phone.