Did he do it?

In a recent news story that has been all over TV and the Internet, Phillip Markoff allegedly set up appointments on Craigslist with two women who were then attacked by him. One women died. There could be other victims, they are still investigating. 

I think this is a serious case and I think I can definitely relate this to my theme of enabling or suppressing your identity within new media. I have not talked much about Craigslist on my blogs but I think it is a type of new media and social networking site that sometimes gets overlooked because of all the hype of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. 

This type of site allows you to search for services, jobs, houses, and post ones that you are willing to sell or advertise as well. Many probably did not know there was a section titled “eroitc” on there though. I feel like that is just asking for trouble, but anyways the results from this service has left one woman dead and who knows what else has happened to others. 

I think this man who is luring these women into his hotel rooms etc, has obviously suppressed his identity to his fiance, neighbor, and family (if this is true) and let another side of him be enabled on the Internet. KSL reported on this story and here are a few quotes from people talking about the alleged murderer:

"He could not hurt a fly," Megan McAllister said in an e-mail to ABC's "Good Morning America. "All I have to say is Philip is a beautiful person, inside and out," she said in the e-mail read on Tuesday's program.

"He was smart, he carried himself well, he was clean, a good looking guy," said Bernard, a retired electric company worker. "He seemed like the type that would have it all. It doesn't make sense."

Those quotes do not sound like someone that would commit this type of crime so obviously he is hiding part of his identity, and then felt that he could show a different side of him on the Internet, which in turn got him into some serious trouble.

Another thing that I thought was interesting in this case was that the investigators were trying to reach his fiances family through Facebook! That shows you how valuable this new social networking site has become, that police are using it to find people!!!! I think that is crazy because you don’t really know if the person who they say they are on Facebook is really who they are. They could receive false information or be wasting their time thinking they have the right person. 

So I think this story teaches us a lesson that most of us probably know. You cannot automatically trust who you meet online. You have to be careful when meeting people you have contacted on the Internet, and especially that people who say they are one minute could be a different one the next minute. Don’t you agree?

Match.com

Before MySpace and Facebook were as popular as they are today for finding new friends, potential dates, or even a husband/wife, there were other services people might not be aware of. 

Services such as Match.com or eHarmony were, and still are places to search for a potential love interest in a safe, secure way. 

Match.com give singles the opportunity to express themselves through various writing sections, photos, as well as select preferences regarding the person they’re searching for. With the click of a mouse, members can instantly see photos and read about potential matches in their area.

I think this type of service is a great way to enable your personality/identity in ways that was never thought possible before. You are able to post things about yourself including interests, hobbies, and what physical features you have. AND you can also post on your page what you are looking for in a partner which shows your personality in a different way. It lets you show the people looking at your page if you would be interested in them or not. 

A big controversy that has been hitting these dating sites is that the gay community was unable to use them until recently. Match.com has recently added the feature to allow gays to use the service just like anyone else. I think this is great because it might be hard to meet people in your area in the gay community and this gives them a chance to see who else is out there in a safe and fun way. 

Another great thing about Match.com is that they understand the importance of privacy and integrity. All communication between members on Match.com happens through an anonymous email network. The names and contact information of all our members are kept confidential until the member personally decides to share it with a potential match. And, to help ensure the integrity of their community, every profile and photo is screened by their Customer Care team for appropriateness before it’s posted to the site.

I think their privacy policy will help people to say what they really feel because they know it is safe and being kept confidential. It also is a place where everyone is there for the same purpose. Unlike Facebook where some people are there for friends and local events, this site is clear that it is to find a match. 

On top of being safe, and fun, I believe Match.com will allow many people who are too shy to go out and meet people to have a chance to find someone they love. Just like some people are too shy to talk in class, imagine how hard it would be to speak up to someone you might like. This is a space where you can break our of your shell and feel empowered to say what you want and maybe talk to people you never would have had the chance to before.

What do you think about online dating sites? Good….Bad……?

Who's really behind the words?

As Twitter is increasingly becoming more popular by the day, I have been seeing many great news articles being written about it. 

I found an article written April 6 that talked about fake identities of celebrities on Twitter. They talk about it in a more comedic way than usual, which gave it added appeal.

If you want to read the whole article here is the link:

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30032294

I think this article is interesting because I have mainly been touching upon “normal” peoples identities being involved in this type of setting, but we have to think of the people that are in the spotlight all the time too, and how these new technologies are affecting their identities as well. 

This can relate back to the article we read titled Evaluating the Social and Cultural Implications of the Internet by Brey. Specifically, when he talks about some of the benefits of the Internet including Information Dissemination. As a reminder, this just means that the internet makes it possible for anyone to quickly and easily post and disperse information and make that information available to a large amount of people, even though that information might not be completely true or appropriate. 

For example, recently Dina Lohan, mother of Lindsey Lohan, was impersonated on Twitter by “clever Twitter troll Matt Cherette. He recently raked the exposed nerves of sensitive Twitter fanboys and inadvertently punked E!’s alleged comedian Chelsea Handler by posing as celebrity mom Dina Lohan on an extended rant regarding the unfairness of Twitter’s 140 character limit.” This proves that not only net newbies are falling for these fake identities, but other celebrities too!

Now as we all know, with the fame and fortune of being a celebrity, there is also going to  rumors and false information posted about you online, but it is still not right, or is it?

On top of people impersonating celebrities that are alive, there has been a recent spike in people pretending to be people who have died like Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman.

Do you feel like this is okay? These people have passed away and now someone is pretending to be them and they have no control over it. Not that the celebrities who are alive have control over it either but still…….it’s a touchy subject. 

Ubiquitous Computing

As we all know there are several different ways that our identity is at risk when we talk about ubiquitous computing. I have grabbed a few different ways that our privacy/identity would potentially be at risk if this new technology was implemented around the nation. 

 

First of all, ubiquitous computing has many benefits but we still need to look for those dangers or downfalls that might not be so obvious. 

One downfall that we might not have noticed before is that the government could potentially track your every movement and potentially use that evidence for the legal prosecutions of crime or things like a cheating spouse, etc. As we talked about in class, is our privacy more important than being able to have these great new breakthrough technologies?

I would tend to want to be somewhere in the middle, but if I had to choose one, I think I would choose to have new technologies and lose a sense of my privacy. That is me personally, but I’m sure there are many people who would not look at it that way. 

I feel this way because I am usually apart of the early adopters and I always want to be one of the first to have and use new technologies. I want to have it and use it even if I have to sacrifice something important. Plus, when the Internet was first started up, I think we must have been going through something similar to this, maybe just not so extreme. Before we had the Internet it was difficult to track some ones interests etc, through technologies and when the Internet was introduced that all would change, so I believe we have had to give up things before and its just a part of the cycle of new technologies being introduced. 

As Weiss says in his article, “The future world of ubiquitous computing may very well shift from one of ease and convenience to one where each of us has an inescapable 

sense of being watched, at best, and no control over our personal information, at worst. He also goes on to say that, “These issues are already being argued in the contexts of corporate e-mail snooping and the use of IT software that can track user activity down to the level of individual key strokes.” 

As this new phenomena is approaching dangers will surface and people will be worried, but when this becomes an everyday kinda thing, I think we will see more of the benefits being talked about and not worry as much about the downfalls. 

After seeing some of the negative effects, I found an interesting quote from Hazel Grian who wrote an article about the Sixth Sense Computing. 

She says, [Sixth Sense Computing] “It's the opposite of virtual reality, instead of me going into a world that doesn't exist this brings the world that doesn't exist into the world that I live in. Ubiquitous computing reality means you can pull in all sort of data from the cloud as you walk through a real space rather than Second Life.”

I thought this was interesting because we talk so much about “reality” vs. “virtual reality” and I thought that was an interesting way to look at it.