Gumption

More Cybershaming via Cameraphone on a Train

Another recent incident of cybershaming, involving a subway passenger in New York who used a cameraphone to create and share a photographic record of shameful behavior, was reported in the New York Daily News yesterday. 

On August 18, Thao Nguyen was on her way back from an interview when a man sitting across from her on a nearly empty subway car started staring at her and then started to masturbate.  She snapped a photo with her phone and the man got off at the next stop.  Nguyen filed a police report, and then later posted the photo on Flickr and craigslist, allowing a far broader set of people to participate in identifying the man.  Given that the photo has been on Flickr since August 19, I'm surprised that the man has still not been identified.

I welcome the empowerment of broad participation in community policing exhibited through this incident and the earlier example of cybershaming in Korea.  However, I suspect it will not be long before someone uses a manipulated photo to publicly humiliate an innocent person ... perhaps it's already occured ... and we've seen some pretty serious repurcussions from an earlier incident of broadly publicizing forged documents.

[via BoingBoing]

[Update, 2 September 2005: WNBC reports "A Manhattan man was arrested Wednesday and charged with public lewdness after a rider in a subway car used her camera phone to snap a photo of the man exposing himself and posted it on the Internet."]

Cybershaming and cybercompassion

Don Park reports on a woman whose dog defecated on a train in Korea and refused to clean up the mess. 

It began in a subway train with a girl whose dog made a mess on the train floor. When nearby elders told her to clean up the mess, she basically told them to f[***] off. A nearby enraged netizen then took pictures of her and posted it, without any masking, on a popular website which started a nationwide witchhunt.

Within hours, she was labeled gae-ttong-nyue (dog-shit-girl) and her pictures and parodies were everywhere. Within days, her identity and her past were revealed. Request for information about her parents and relatives started popping up and people started to recognize her by the dog and the bag she was carrying as well as her watch, clearly visible in the original picture. All mentions of privacy invasion were shouted down with accusations of being related to the girl. The common excuse for their behavior was that the girl doesn't deserve privacy.

I remember reading something a while ago that attributed the increase in crime in the USA to a decrease in shame, arguing that laws and law enforcement alone are not enough to deter crime, and that the entire community needs to make sure that transgressors know when they are engaging in unacceptable behavior.  [I can't find that article now, but other discussions of this topic can be found here and here.]

CBS News ran a recent story about an online system for tracking sexual offenders in Bryan, Texas, which not only posts photos of transgressors, but shows their residences on a map, and a nationwide system, SCAN USA (for Safe Community Action Network), that will send registered users a notification if a released sexual offender moves into their neighborhood.  The Korean story represents a lowering of the threshold, both with respect to the seriousness of the crime and the level of institutional support required.  [Cyberbullying might represent a further lowering of thresholds, to what I consider to be socially unacceptable levels.]

On the one hand, I think it is beneficial whenever members of a community take a greater interest -- and stake -- in the people, places and events that affect their community.  On the other hand, I've been wrestling with questions regarding my own judgment and shame, toward myself and others.  I want to become less judgmental and more compassionate.

It is interesting that among the photos that were posted about the Korean incident was one of an elderly man cleaning up the mess.  I don't know whether that man had -- or expressed -- judgments about the woman, but I think that he is modeling a crucial element for stronger communities: a willingness of members to fill in the gaps for those who are unwilling or unable to take responsibility for their own actions (or, in this case, the actions of their dogs) ... practicing random or purposeful acts of kindness.

I just read a passage last night in "Field Notes on the Compassionate Life" on an experiment in which children behaved more generously after watching an adult acting generously, even when there is a "single exposure" to such an act ... and even when several months elapse.  I know that I often find kindness contagious; for example, I am more likely to allow another driver to merge onto a highway when someone else has earlier shown me kindness in allowing me to merge into a lane.  I wonder how far this kind of cumulative effect might carry our society.

And, getting back to the original topic, I wonder whether posting photos of acts of kindness and compassion might trigger an outpouring of approbation and gratitude ... and further acts of kindess and compassion, in online and/or physical communities -- a virtuous cycle of cybercompassion.

[via BoingBoing]

Location-aware Computing: Walking the Talk, Mapping the Walk

Chris Heathcote has shared many interesting observations and insights regarding location-aware computing; he is now experiencing -- and allowing us to experience -- location-aware computing first-hand by posting his location on his web site (and linking to a map of that location). Chris is using a Pretec BluetoothGPS Wireless GPS and Mobile Data-logger, an Aspicore GSM Tracker for Symbian OS Series 60 Phones, a Nokia 6600 phone, and a custom webserver program. And why is he doing this?

A bigger question is why publish this information in public. I must admit I'm not overly happy with giving everyone access to this data, but then again, this kind of service is the near-future that designers like myself have been preaching for years. It will cause privacy problems, it will cause social embarassment, it may change the way I live. Unless I try it myself, I will never know what unexpected consequences publishing this information will have. Self-ethnography is not scientifically valid, but I think it's one of the best ways of empathising with the problems new technology creates. If I won't use it, I shouldn't expect you to either.

Chris is open to the possibility of letting others participate in this experiment, either via sharing the code or sharing the web service; it will be very interesting to see what his -- and others' -- experiences will be in this grand experiment!

[via Anne Galloway (Purse Lip Square Jaw)]