WHEN DOES ONE CROSS A LINE
THE AGE OF INFO WARS
***A RECENT SLATE FRONT PAGE***
Editor of Lez Get Real outs himself as a retired military man from Ohio. |
Same group that hacked PBS claiming Tupac is alive takes on the government. This front page from SLATE struck me as a reminder of the precarious nature of our communication and information systems. Even the CIA's web site has been hacked. Credibility and security are at risk. They will continue to be so, it seems, for as long as we build our social structure around cyber communication. There are no safeguards. As we do with blogs, I followed a link from the SLATE piece to a well articulated set of thoughts from Brian Spears. THIS POST-A NOTE TO MY FELLOW WHITE MALES MAKES SOME OUTSTANDING POINTS. LINK HERE What Brian wrote prompted me to write a response. "Fiction is just that. Journalism is an approximation of truth build on a foundation of facts. The blogsophere is full of both and hybrids. Credibility remains the currency of journalism. Notice or self expression may well be the fuel of bloggers. These are mostly divergent cultures, but they aggregate n this cyber gumbo that we inhabit. Years ago I posed a question to a network executive for whom I was developing a project: at what point do the ethics of the cyber world begin to alter our sense of justice in the "real world?" Random mayhem in gaming, serial killing, explicit violence, explicit sexuality and false persona in the cyber world are permitted. At what point does a social tolerance of such a recreational behavior begin to sew genuine social consequences? It was an odd question to post to a network executive who went on to preside over what we call "reality" television. The post points the effect. Anthony Wiener is living through another repercussion. One may feel a cloak of protection or privacy while feeding the blogosphere with any manner of fantasy, lunacy or "creativity." It is not illegal to do so, yet. Whether it is right or wrong is for someone else to reason. It does however have consequence and indeed could be more serious or even lethal than a lone writer, wrapped in their own reality may have the intelligence or common sense to realize." The old adage is true-Buyer beware, especially in this age of information wars. We would add to that the modern admonition- Read with care. "You should read only what is truly good or what is frankly bad." Gertrude Stein-quoted by Hemingway in A MOVEABLE FEAST There are efforts underway on the security front. LINK HERE TO READ OF A NOVEL APPROACH TO NET SECURITY BEING DEVELOPED BY A GROUP OF NEW YORK STUDENTS. DAY BOOK ARCHIVE SHOTS       See you down the trail. |
