Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

If you’ve ever bothered to read any of the comment threads on this site which extend over, say, 30 comments you’ll realize the internet is full of idiots. And not just idiots, but all the kinds of truly disgusting people you would rather not know exist. Take the recent highly-publicized example of blogger Kathy Sierra who claims to have been harassed by death threats (we’ll set aside the legal considerations of whether the material showed sufficient intent, even though she repeatedly claims without proof that the material broke “federal law”). She articulately makes the point that the mere creation of material this offensive shows a perversion of bloggers:

It really doesn’t make much difference whether the person intends to act on the threat… it’s the threat itself that inflicts the damage. It’s the threat that makes you question whether that “anonymous” person is as disturbed as their comments and pictures suggest.

The Wrong Reaction

We should be tempted to fall into despair, for human nature is evil. This is exactly what Robert Scoble has done, turning to blogo-Solipsism and taking a week off. Both strong emotional reactions and withdrawing from the blogosphere produce more harm than good. After all, if you’re affected by the cruelty present on the internet, hiding will only make it worse.

The Right Reaction

I usually read Shelly and wince, but she’s right on here:

Frankly, calmer heads are needed when responding to this event. Webloggers are not very good at maintaining perspective. I know, I’ve been one for too long.

This is not something new. People are irresponsible and rude in real life, and the situation is only exacerbated by the internet and the so-called shield of anonymity. We are living in the world of that metaphorical question “if you were invisible would you steal?”

The Irony

Seth Godin suggests that “Anonymity hasn’t made the web a better place. Instead, it has allowed some of the worst ideas ever to get published.” He’s almost right. While the Internet surely allows anonymous slanderers to publish the worst ideas that exist, those ideas are powerless without an audience. And, Kathy Sierra’s public tantrum today gave her attackers more audience than they could have ever hoped for. It’s interesting that by specifically decrying offensive material we draw more attention to it. Creators of hate speech don’t mind bad publicity.

Take It All Away

Still, taking away anonymity (Discouraging Anonymity is Key to Protecting Visibility) is not going to solve any of these problems. First, there is the wee technical problem that it’s totally impossible. Second, and more importantly, people will always exist for whom hate speech is a normal way of life. Only the broadest social reforms can decrease the incident of this kind of thought. You cannot police what people feel in their hearts, but over time you can mold it.

The Only Solution

Remember the racism of the 60s? I don’t, but having heard the stories, it’s quite obvious that incredible leaps have been made to bring black Americans to the same social acceptance level as their white counterparts. Even so, there still remains work to be done wherever racism, sexism, nepotism, ageism, etc are found.

That work will not be accomplished by stifling speech (that means you, Wordpress), but rather by changing the way we are educated, and therefore the way we think.

This video shows the execution of Saddam Hussein, convicted to death by hanging for his crimes against humanity. It doesn’t appear to be particularly graphic; the only clear parts show Saddam being placed on the gallows, yet the content may be unsafe for work or children:

The video was filmed by members of the guards who had smuggled in cell-phone cameras. Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon threatened to stop the execution when observers began jeering, but did not, a PR mistake in hindsight.

Update: Apparently Saddam’s hanging has sparked a series of copycat suicides. I find it strange that children would copy anything they see on the internet; this is sad indeed that the death of a murderous dictator can affect the innocent.

After pressure from bloggers who noticed that an image showing Beirut after an airstrike had cloned smoke and other features, Reuters said, “photo editing software was improperly used on this image. A corrected version will immediately follow this advisory. We are sorry for any inconvience.” Here’s what the image looked like, as published by Reuters:

Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut’s suburbs August 5, 2006. Many buildings were flattened during the attack. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj

Then, Reuters issued an image kill for the photo:

Reuters has suspended a photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to a photograph showing smoke billowing from buildings following an air strike on Beirut. Reuters takes such matters extremely seriously as it is strictly against company editorial policy to alter pictures.

The new, correct photo, is this one:

ATTENTION EDITORS: THIS IS A CORRECTED FILE OF LBN20. REUTERS HAS ISSUED A KILL OF THE PREVIOUS VERSION. Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut’s suburbs August 5, 2006. Picture taken August 5, 2006. REUTERS/Adnan Hajj (LEBANON)

You can check out Yahoo for more photos posted by Adnan Hajj yourself; I don’t immediately see any other doctored photos.

It’s the 20th year anniversary of the worst nuclear accident in the history of mankind. Pray the concrete sarcophagus holds, and the years of rain and animal infestation have not torn it completely away, as some speculate.

NASA has released a huge number of high-resolution pictures of our planet earth at visibleearth.nasa.gov, which are, of course, free from copyright restriction of any kind, NASA being a government agency. Want a photo of our big blue marble planet? Check. Want to download infrared (IR) imagery of various parts of the earth? Check. Want to look at foliage, sea levels, or some other geological feature? Check.

They’re even using torrents (BT) to distribute high resolution photos of certain parts of the earth. Personally, I’ve never seen a 86400 x 43200 photo before, and one 1/4 of each dimension, or 1/16 smaller took 10 minutes to open in Photoshop with a gig and a half of RAM and a server scratch drive with a 16MB buffer. I’m glad they’re not using Apache to serve 2.9GB photos!

Very recently, NASA also put out this gorgeous picture of the southern lights, or aurora australis, as their IMAGE satellite circled the earth on September 11, 2005 after an unusually high burst of solar flare radiation:

The colored lights are the result of high-energy particles reacting with the earth’s magnetic shield.