Another employee gets into trouble for Youtube video

Don’t they ever learn? A British supermarket chain has started  investigations into the posting of video clips on Youtube showing people perfomring stunts while wearing the company’s uniforms. The staff were shown to be fooling around and skiving from work. They were also reportedly shown giving management “the finger”. Not a smart move.

In my last posting, I talked about the need to use new media responsibly, and that call is now more urgent than ever! Now, it seems that cyberspace is also used for cyber-bullying. In the past, bullies were more or less confined to a particular space, like school or work, but now, it’s taken on a new global spin, with cyber bullies taunting their victims 24/7, transcending time and also space! The bullying comes in the form of posting nasty remarks on personal pages or aggressive taunts and insults during instant messaging. This is sad given the tremendous potential cyber space offers for social networking.   

Using new media responsibly

aplA recent survey by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore shows that children aged between 10 and 14 are the most tech-savvy. More than 85% in this age group use computers and the Internet to play, learn and communicate. The finding is not surprising. This would be the group to have grown up and been socialised in a highly technological environment filled with PCs, laptops and other gadgets.  

While the use of technology is part of their daily lives, it is a concern that many are spending too much time, as much as up to 18 hours a day playing online games such as MapleStory. Don’t they sleep, eat, go to school? And this doesn’t just afflict those aged between 10 and 15!  

Just a few days ago, an older teen, 17 year-old, Garyl Tan, was charged with being a Wi-Fi mooch. He had tapped into an unsecured network to get online access to play the game, when his parents had stopped him from playing it at home.

This case has created a controversy. Many have questioned whether it’s illegal to mooch and if the person who allowed his network to be unsecured to be the guilty party instead. That aside, what really caught my attention was the description of the boy cycling around his neighbourhood with his laptop, cruising for an unsecured network! It totally reeks of desperation and madness. It’s little wonder he has been sent for psychiatric treatment for his addiction.

The worrying thing is, how many more of such youngsters are there out there? They seriously need help. Especially at a time when online games are touted as the next big educational tool! The concept of playing as learning is not a new one, but what’s new is the use of online games, as seen in Learning by Joystick. It’s important for children to be taught how to keep some balance in their lives as they play and learn, so that they don’t succumb to gaming addiction.

Another group of people who need help are those who think they can wield the power of new media with impunity. There was yet another recent controversy about the posting of a video online of a couple engaging in a sex act on the bus: bus-sex videotaping. What’s worse? Having sex on the bus, or taping it and showing it to the world? In a separate incident overseas,  a beating of a girl was posted online. It’s not sure if this is another case of happy slapping. Or if the person who caught it on camera simply wanted to show it to the world instead of helping the victim. Or is this a new form of citizen journalism where the citizen journalist goes round looking for a story, not unlike traditional journalists. And not unlike traditional journalists, they face the dilemma: do they interfere or intervene in an event, or do they simply act as the recorders of the event?

  

Bloggers get sued

In my last posting, I wrote a note of caution about bloggers writing negative comments online. While there is nothing wrong with writing negative comments, bloggers need to ensure that what they say is accurate, or risk getting into trouble. It is naive to think that you can post anything you like and get away with impunity.

Yesterday, we heard news that the Malaysian paper, The New Straits Times, has sued a couple of Malaysian bloggers for defamation:  NST sues bloggers. The case is a landmark case, as many see it as a test of how new media is perceived in Malaysia. It’ll be interesting if laws for traditional media will also be used to judge the case involving new media.

However, this case is different from the mean bloggers I mentioned previously. It has been complicated due to political undertones or rather, overtones. The leading Maysian newspaper has sued two bloggers, Ahirudin Attan and Jeff Ooi over postings in their respective blogs for defamation. The pair had been attacking top company officials. Apparently, the two bloggers have been reflecting pro-Mahathir sentiments, and NST is owned by the ruling party, UMNO.

This is the first time bloggers have been sued for libel in Malaysia, and some say that this is curtailing the freedom of expression, especially when Internet communications has been increasing amidst government controls on mainstream media. Many feel that tightening control will have an impact on democratic principles in the country, and will have a detrimental impact on citizen journalism and the growing blogospehere in the country.

There is no doubt the verdict of the case will be eagerly awaited by users of both new and mainstream media alike, in Malaysia as well as the rest of the world.

Mean bloggers, beware!

In a recent posting, I brought up the concern raised by a netizen in Singapore, about pictures of people put online in order to shame them. In a somewhat related issue, another netizen wrote in to the press when he saw a photo of his friend posted in a blog owned by two female bloggers, with mean things said about his friend. Student Low Wei Xiang wrote in to ask if that was acceptable. In their blog, the girls have written “We are mean and we are not shy about it…You can’t stop us and we are not doing anything wrong.”

While it’s still a grey area if commenting on someone else in the new media in a negative way can constitute libel, the act of ‘grabbing’ another person’s photo and using it online or not, is wrong as the rights to the photo belong to the photographer. Still, there is no definitive law about photographing someone and using it and commenting on it.

Nevertheless, netizens should be aware that they can’t hide behind anonymity online. It’s a false sense of anonymity and discretion and discipline are still needed in deciding what can be done or not. Albeit the rules have yet to set on new media; yet, good common sense and common courtesies should still rule. 

Sell a PC, plant a tree!

The New Paper article Sell a PC, Plant a Tree caught my eye. Finally, a technology company is bold enough to remind society that in the ongoing quest for new technologies and in the ever increasing use of gadgets and appliances, the environment is being adversely affected. The PC industy needs to go green.

The recent natural disasters and weather phenomena have made me think about how our materialistic and consumerist society is affecting Mother Earth. El Nino, the Greenhouse effect, global warming…we’ve heard much about them, and their effects are hitting close to home, with rising temperatures and freaky weather the world over.

Yet, on the other hand, each day, we are told to buy more, use more! We seem more concerned about wireless hotspots than weather hotspots. We are told to go online, and be connected, yet we are not reminded that using the computer, surfing the Web, playing online games all use energy and deplete our resources.

Finally, Dell has been brave enough to remind consumers and technology users of that connection. The company has launched its “Plant a tree for me” prgramme, and announced that it will “foster the planting of trees to help compensate for the effect on the environment of the energy used up by the devices” it makes. It will plant a tree for every PC sold.   

Kudos to Dell!

  

You can’t ban Youtube!

Just a few days ago, I wrote about a Brazilian judge ordering a ban on a steamy Youtube video of Brazilian model, Daniela Cicarelli. This ban has now been reversed. Of course! How is it possible for anyone to ban a video on Youtube, or on the Internet for that matter. With borderless technology, such a ban can only be seen as futile. In fact, the ban drew much flak from many, saying that it was against the freedom of the press.  And not surprisingly, not unlike previous bans, the ban on the video made it even more popular and it started popping up elsewhere.

This goes to show that traditional forms of censorship no longer work. Instead, society needs to be more responsible about what goes online. However, that will be tough as different societies have different ideas of what’s acceptable and what’s not. Do you think society is ready for self-censorship then?

In another separate yet somehow related issue, shame sites have also created a stir in Singapore. Just as the Brazilian footage was shot without the knowledge of the model, and hence is seen as a violation of her privacy, some people have started taking photos of shameful acts such as people who pretend to sleep on the trains or buses so as not to give up their seats to others, which can be seen as a violation of privacy too. These pictures are then posted online for all to view and tsk tsk over. Is such a public embarrassment wrong, if the end is to make people behave themselves in public? The verdict is still out there.

Some useful blogging blogs

Found  a few pretty useful blogs on blogging recently so thought I’d include them here for reference. Hope they will be helpful for your use and reference too!

Tips on choosing blog software

15 blogging tips for 2007

Blog software comparison chart

‘Old media’ taking ‘new media’ seriously

In a move that signalled that traditional media is taking new media seriously, the Singapore Press Holdings Foundation launched a lecture series on the media in transition, with the first lecture held yesterday. The guest speaker was Prof Jenkins (MIT) who spoke on From Youtube to YouUniversity- Learning and Playing in the Era of Social Networks.  He touched on the need for parents to be be aware of what their children were doing online and to guide them, but not control them.

He also spoke on something that I highlighted previously in an earlier blog posting of mine, that of how technology is changing the relationships people have with each other: “there needs to be more investment in forging friendships and building relationships – where people actually meet” instead of just relying on emails and handphones.

Organisations and governments are waking up to the powerful movement brought about by citizen journalism and participatory citizenship. Traditional media seems to carry that sense of “if we can’t beat them, let’s join them” as they try to engage new forms of media to complement and supplement the tradtional forms. Even governments realise that it’s probably easier to embrace new media and harness its potential and avoid its pitfalls than avoid it altogether, as if that’s possible. Having said that, Brazil has actually ordered that Youtube block viewers from watching a steamy video of Brazilian model, after she appealed to the courts to have the video removed! It’ll be interesting to see how the ban will play out in today’s borderless world, esp in cyberspace! 

Well, given the fast changing technology that we have, the definition of new media is hard to pin down, or what is encompasses is hard to pin down. There’s been discussion that blogging is on its way out, just like email is no longer as widespread since the advent of instant messenging. I guess the form may change, but the need to communicate and express is something intrinsic, so the essence of blogging will still remain.

It’s exciting to see how new media will evolve thsi year. The blogscape is indeed full of potential!   

Happy New Year! Some reflections and musings about the blogosphere

A happy new year to you, dear reader. I hope that the year has been good to you so far.

December and January tend to be months of reflection. In fact, January takes its name from Janus, an ancient Greek (?) god that had two faces: One looking back and one looking forward.  Now, before I start rambling too much, I thought I’d just take a quick look at some of the events that have happened in the recent past, before I start looking at some other issues.

Now, which Internet user did not feel the effects of the Taiwan earthquake. I mean, the aftershocks and reverberations were felt the world over, well, perhaps a bit more on the Asian side of the world. It may not have been the physical earthquake we felt, but the effects were no less real. The online business people would attest to that, not forgetting the bankers and financial consultants who have come to heavily depend on the latest financial info the Internet brings. Scary isn’t it? If more online connections were affected, the entire economic system could and would possibly crash!

It was the earthquake in Taiwan, but to many Internet users, it’s the Tsunami of the digital world, the Katrina of new media! Okay, okay, perhaps a bit too much hyperbole, but you get the picture.

I guess the silver lining in this would be that people are now more aware of how dependent and perhaps over-dependent people are on the Internet. And now we know how dependent we are on a few cables that were strategically laid in earthquake prone soil. Did anyone research the spot in the first place? And hopefully measures are being put in place to put things right.

Another issue is that of employees and videos and Youtube-the need for the responsible use of technology. One incident that brought this up was the Youtube video of ‘Starhub’ employee goofing off and fooling around at work. Bottomline is, don’t do it. Both the goofing off and fooling around AND/OR putting it on Youtube.

Now, another issue caught my attention recently: the article in Digital Life, “Staying alive as a digital warrior“. No, the article is not about killing your way as a warrior or soldier in one of the many digital games (they are always about soldiers and warriors, aren’t they?) but about how people who stay on their but the whole time could seriously be putting their health at risk! I’m sure we remember the case about the boy who refused to stop playing computer games – he didn’t eat, didn’t sleep , didn’t wash…Ewww! And it seems that games nowadays are also epileptic-inducing, which means they can cause fits. They definitely need to come with a label of warning!

Well, on to something else. In Asiaone.com, the article Speakers of new digital language talks about the new breed of teenagers aka “digital natives” who “cannot do without mobile phones, blogs, vodcasts, MSN chat and YouTube, which give them a voice to as large an audience as they can get.”

MDA’s recent research found that “half of all Singaporean teens aged 15 to 19 are blogging or podcasting” and this is reflective of the situation worldwide: “as of May 2005, more than half the world’s about 38 million blogs belong to those aged 19 or younger.” Even young kids are getting in on it. “A Straits Times survey of 60 youth aged 12 to 19 found that most started communicating online by the age of 10. All have e-mail accounts, half have blogs, and 87 per cent use online instant messengers to talk to friends.”

Interestingly, some time last week, I came across an article stating that more elderly are also seeking a new form of expression in blogs, and the article mentioned one of the more famous blogs by a 70 plus Frenchman! Wonderful! As the Flying Dutchman said in his retort to critics who called him too old to be hosting blogtv, who says that the Internet is only for the young? It could be the tool for egalitarianism!

Anyway, many young people cite freedom of expression and instant interaction as top draws for using online communications. But what worries me are comments like these: ‘You write what you want, say what you feel behind a veil you can choose to pull aside when you want. No one judges you.’ According to Counsellor Daniel Koh, ‘blogging lets them assume a role they cannot assume in real life’. He says there are three kinds of bloggers: opinion leaders, those who experiment with their identity and others who ‘have problems expressing themselves in real life’.

This is worrying, as hiding behind a mask for a while may be fine to allow you to learn to express yourself, but hide behind it too long and you may never ever learn to reveal your true self! Technology could be used to help as an emotional crutch but if used wrongly, it could be an emotional cripple instead. And now with new games such as Second Life encouraging people to spend all their free time building up communities online, let’s hope that people do not get too involved in their virtual selves and virtual worlds. Instead of building a second life, they should simply get a life!