Ged Carroll

Blog

  • The cyber-lynching of David Motari

    David Motari is a US Marine who allegedly appeared in a video that was posted on YouTube. The clip showed a US serviceman throw a puppy over a cliff or gulley. I am not going to go into the rights and wrongs of this incident or whether the video is a fake. But I was fascinated and disturbed by the public reaction online.

    There was an online groundswell that condemned his actions. A quick Google search showed how many people then researched and published personal details about Motari. From there they looked at  his spouse, his friends and family. They listed two telephone numbers with different area codes for him and provided an address in Monroe, Washington State.

    Screen shots were taken of his Bebo profile that had a clear picture making him easy to identify. They researched his customised Honda Civic and listed the Hawaii registration number of his vehicle.

    They posted his wife’s social network details. This was followed by the social network details of his sister. These also included pictures. The online mob had spoken and they wanted punishment meted out to David Motari. This all happened before the military authorities had a chance to respond and investigate adequately.

    My efforts to get on to the two domains (marines.mil and usmc.mil) used by the US Marines to see how they were handling the online reputational aspect of this event was fruitless as the sites seemed to be overwhelmed with traffic (or taken down to prevent hacktivism).

    Thinking about the incident and the response, gave me some questions to mull on:

    • What happens if its not a puppy in the future but, instead say someone is accused of killing a child? For instance, the IHT recently had a report about an investigation of a marine who had been accused of raping a 14 year old girl on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. These charges had since been withdrawn
    • How far will the online lynch mobs go?
    • Are the people publishing details like those of the Motari family inciting a third-party to commit an assault or worse?

    I get the sense that we (online users in western society) entered moral territory that we don’t understand the full impact of yet.

    We have yet to wrestle with the great individual and collective responsibility that comes with having access to the internet and all its services. At the moment too many people treat the web as a playground and it concerns me that stupid and senseless acts may happen before this lesson is widely learned.

    Some links to provide a bit of background on this story:

    • A sample blog posting in praise of the cyber mob – “But let this be a lesson – if you piss off nerds on the Internet, they not only won’t care if the infractions were legitimate or not, but they’ll make your life a bitch and half. Vigilante justice for the win!” This is just one of many reactions.
    • The link on Digg with over 3,500 comments at the time of writing
    • The 300 news stories that Google News found on the incident

    More online culture related content here.

  • Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

    Predictably Irrational struck me on first glance at the cover as just a trendy coffee table business book similar to the ones that Malcolm Gladwell cranks out every few years. That is a book that has a bit of buzz and is entertaining to read, but is much real-world use as The Beano annual.

    It has the same catchy title and a pleasingly designed but poker-faced sleeve that could have easily housed a contemporary novel or a ‘Men are from mars, women are from venus’-type books.

    Fortunately, Dan Ariely instead dissects some of the consumer behaviour factors that play a key role in areas such as decision-making and perceived value in an easy-to-understand format. He discusses a mix of experiments and real-world examples, such as online direct response adverts by The Economist to bring his ideas alive for the reader.

    Given my introduction, how much use is the book? Time will tell, but it has given me ideas about thinking about the way I present, pitch for new business and productise my current work in saleable chunks for existing and new clients. As a consumer I will evaluate retail and direct offers to me in a different way, it may not stop me being played, but at least I will be conscious of what exactly is going on and why I am responding to the retail stimuli. Ariely’s Predictably Irrational has been the first in a good number of works on behaviour change relevant to marketers. It now sits alongside Thinking Fast And Slow and the works of Caldini. More book reviews here.

  • The Future of Ideas

    I was curious to read Lawrence Lessig‘s The Future of Ideas because of Google’s recent intervention in the ongoing wireless spectrum auction being held in America. Google sought to get slivers of American wireless spectrum in the 90MHz space with a view to providing an alternative form of broadband access.

    This would be a challenge to the cable TV incumbents. It is unusual to see an online media property look to extend itself into network infrastructure. It indicates a broader desire to get into a rent seeking position. The Future of Ideas is the antithesis of this viewpoint with a view to make data and ideas more fluid in terms of adoption and consumption.

    The Future of Ideas builds on previous writing he has done around creative commons and guides readers through the complex relationship between connectivity supply, media platforms and intellectual property. The story moves from the start of the media and the telecoms industries through the current struggles of the media industry to come to terms with the internet as  a baseline platform of distribution and consumption.

    Lessig highlights some of the current challenges in intellectual property laws throughout old and new media in an articulate and highly readable manner. Some of his ideas make uncomfortable reading for established media / software players. His work as a definite agenda that is broadly in line with the libertarian stance taken by many technology and web pioneers, with regulation only considered warranted to keep platforms open. The move to keep platforms open comes at a critical time when platforms such as LinkedIn are becoming closed in nature and data portability is becoming much more difficult.

    Downsides to book

    My main criticism of the book would be that it does not take enough of an international viewpoint, but focuses almost exclusively on America. More book reviews here.

  • Crypto by Steven Levy

    Reading Crypto followed after I had read Steven Levy’s previous works Hackers, Insanely Great and Artificial Life earlier on in my PR career. Along with Fire In The Valley and Accidental Empires, Levy’s books had provided a great insight into the technology industry and the cultural forces behind it.

    Crypto is more of the same as the counter-cultural belief systems that begat the Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Club. This viewpoint clashed head on with the security apparatus of the US government. Some of the descriptions around public cryptographic usage like PGP and MailSafe were analogous to what we now call the social graph in terms of issues of personal trust, privacy and differing types of relationships and interactions. The book also makes interesting reading because it takes you back to a time when technology moved forwards in leaps and bounds of public perception.

    Its hard now to feel the same excitement about the internet now that we’ve lived with it for the past decade and a half, when I moved into my present house I considered my broadband connection as important as getting the utilities sorted for my move. ADSL was as important as electricity for me. And with that ubiquity, the magic has disappeared.

    Levy communicates the principles of modern cryptography well and leads the reader through the myriad events that let to modern cryptography and why it is so important. (Hint: how do you think it is so hard for criminals not to buy things on your credit card once you’ve shopped at Amazon, YesAsia, the iTunes Music Store or Pizza Hut?). More book reviews here.

  • Semantic web + more news

    Semantic web

    Tim Berners-Lee Says the Time for the Semantic Web is Now – The semantic web is designed to be machine readable. The underlying technologies supporting the semantic web are used to formally represent metadata. For example, ontology can describe concepts, relationships between entities, and categories of things. The most interesting thing about Berners-Lee’s interview is that he thinks that the semantic web will be closer to Google’s vision through database manipulation rather than folksonomy. I think you will need a combination of both for a semantic web that works

    China

    Masters of Media, New Media MA Amsterdam » Chinese low-wage workers disloyal for a reason  – Chinese workers sticking it to the man and wanting an independent China to kick multi-national mega corp. bootie

    Consumer behaviour

    Technology Can Be a Blessing for Bored Workers – New York Times

    Americans Trust Online News More Than TV | WebProNews – online trusted more than TV. Does this say more about the rise of online or the pitiful state of TV news journalism? I don’t know

    White working class ‘voiceless’ – A majority of white working class Britons feel nobody speaks for people like them, a BBC survey has suggested. Some 58% said they felt unrepresented compared to 46% of white middle class respondents to a Newsnight poll.

    Design

    Normal Room – home for global homes, wonderful lifestyles and fabulous interior design – Home – for interior design junkies

    Olympus Announces ‘World’s Smallest and Lightest’ DSLR – Consumer-SLR – but you dont want a camera thats too light because then you get issues wtih camera shake

    Ethics

    YouTube – Edison Chen Sex Scandal Apology – Hopefully this will finish once and for all the scandal and allow all the starlets to keep their jobs in the Asian entertainment industry. It would be a shame if Maggie Q had to retire :)

    I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Leadfoot | PBS – interesting post on the false green measure of lead-free solder

    FMCG

    Kit Kat Lucky Little – interesting japanese offline / online integrated marketing idea

    BBC NEWS | UK | Tate & Lyle sugar to be Fairtrade – In terms of size and scale, this is the biggest ever Fairtrade switch by a UK company, will the company get held to a holier than thou status and get beaten up on big food issues the way the post-Prius Toyota got beaten up by environmentalists about the conventionally powered cars that it still sells?

    How to

    7 Food Hacks to Stay Alert Without Caffeine | Zen Habits

    Ideas

    apophenia: Where HCI comes from (and where it might go)

    BIL Conference – Minds Set Free. – TED meets barcamp

    The New Economics of Brands – Harvard Business Online’s Umair Haque – Umair has an interesting article on how Google built their brand

    Innovation

    The World’s Most Innovative Companies | Fast Company – I am surprised that Facebook has scored so highly in this article and we don’t have any of the results of IDEOs commissions described

    Japan

    SMS Text News » Archives » Japan gets new MVNO and starts price war

    Michelin Gives Stars, but Tokyo Turns Up Nose – New York Times – if I go restaurant hunting in Japan, I want to be told by by the Japanese not some French interlopers the best places to go. Also Japan is more wired than most other nations on earth, why the dead tree edition instead of using viaMichelin’s much vaunted mapping on a mobile service?

    Tokyo Taxi Drivers get Ranked | Japan: Stippy – not all taxi drivers who pass The Knowledge are equal now Tokyo is recognising their most highly qualified drivers wtih a star system. Cool idea

    PingMag – Goodbye Madame Butterfly: Sex And Marriage In Japan – interesting author interview about changing society roles in Japan

    Luxury

    Digital World Tokyo | World’s first holographic RFID tag to stop Vuitton knock-offs

    Hoods Hong Kong Previously Opening Exhibition | Hypebeast  – Japanese label Neighbourhood opening their first store in HKG

    Marketing

    Brand persuasion wheel – Ulli Appelbaum – Six most common principles of human persuasion that can be used by marketers reward, threat, expertise, liking, scarcity and social proof

    Media

    Boom times for Chinese film, but what comes next?

    Two takes on essentially the same data set about Google’s clicks Google’s Paid Click Business Slipping – ComScore – Seeking Alpha

    British ISPs to Delve into Behavioral Ads, Too – deal by Phorm, these guys seem to have stepped up a gear. Prospective acquisition material by AOLGoogleIACMicrosoftNewsCorpYahoo?

    Telegraph Opens Tech R&D Lab | paidContent:UK

    Futuretainment: The Asian Media Revolution – O’Reilly Conferences

    Online

    SyncWizard – SyncWizard takes your contacts, appointments, music and documents and zaps them onto the Net. You get a MyStuff page. Using this web site all your personal information is in one password protected place available from any net aware device.

    Digg, Stumbled Upon Is there Room for Yahoo! Buzz

    Delver – Home – Interesting new social search project

    » Social Media in Russia sixtysecondview – David Brain on Russian netizens

    Welcome to Hello Kitty Online! – World of Warcraft puh, this is where online gaming is at. I can see a can of feline whoopass being unleashed on Disney’s Club Penguin

    Yahoo Attracts Younger Users, Google Has Bigger Spenders | WebProNews – interesting data on the demographics of different search engines user base

    New Yahoo tool gathers favorite Web places on mobiles – By Georgina Prodhan, European Technology Correspondent HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) – Yahoo, still fending off a $42 billion takeover bid by Microsoft, unveiled a bookmarking tool on Tuesday that lets users keep track of favorite Web topics on their…

    MediaPost Publications – Yahoo In Control Of Open Search – 03/04/2008 – Trusted web concept gets a bit of a bashing, but the truth is that user intent and context is hard to compute

    Shopnik – experiment in data organisation (thanks to my colleague Nathan for flagging this one)

    Local search in the UK

    Software

    Judge on privacy: Computer code trumps the law | CNET News.com

    Style

    Nike “St. Patrick’s Day” Wildwood 90 Free | Hypebeast – I love these St Pats inspired Nike trainers which are a hybrid of an old school top and the Nike free sole. Top of the morning to ya!

    Technology

    Stegen Electronics – Scandinavian hardware hackers are selling the first multi-region Blu-Ray players from Sony and Pioneer.

    OLPC Review – ICONEYE

    The Technology Chronicles : Apple shareholder meeting Tuesday – hippies try to hijack Apple AGM with green agenda

    The trouble with Steve – Mar. 4, 2008 – Fortune gets tall poppy syndrome and let’s a journalist loose with a scythe on America’s most admired company and its CEO

    Wireless

    400,000 unlocked Apple iPhones turn up on China Mobile – and more are in HKG, Singapore etc

    Hoping to Make Phone Buyers Flip – New York Times – cell phone design and consumer behaviour

    Ian Wood’s reports from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona: Digital Evangelist: Ist day at MWC, Digital Evangelist: Day Two @ MWC and Digital Evangelist: Final Thoughts on Barcelona

    Europeans may be forced to pay for incoming cell calls – email your MP, email your MEP, email Gordon Brown: nip this in the bud