How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit - Yoni Appelbaum - National. T. Mills Kelly encourages his students to deceive thousands of people on the Web. This has angered many, but the experiment helps reveal the shifting nature of the truth on the Internet. lisaquinn565.wordpress A woman opens an old steamer trunk and discovers tantalizing clues that a long-dead relative may actually have been a serial killer, stalking the streets of New York in the closing years of the nineteenth century. A beer enthusiast is presented by his neighbor with the original recipe for Brown's Ale, salvaged decades before from the wreckage of the old brewery--the very building where the Star-Spangled Banner was sewn in 1813. These stories have two things in common. Each tale was carefully fabricated by undergraduates at George Mason University who were enrolled in T.
The first time Kelly taught the course, in 2008, his students confected the life of Edward Owens, mixing together actual lives and events with brazen fabrications. The post quickly gained an audience. Libya February 17th - Keeping with the 2011 Libyan Revolution as it happens. Egyptian Bloggers Report on New Unrest. Video of Egyptian security forces uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday night by a blogger who said that it was shot above Talaat Harb, a street in Cairo, at 9 p.m. local time. Updated | Thursday | 9:30 a.m. Despite restrictions placed on the Internet and a ban on protests, Egyptians who oppose the continued rule of President Hosni Mubarak managed to post accounts and images of fresh demonstrations on the streets of Cairo online on Wednesday.
As my colleagues Kareem Fahim and Mona El-Naggar report, “In front of Cairo’s press and lawyers’ syndicate buildings, more than 100 people shouted slogans, outnumbered by a force of security officers.” From outside the press syndicate, an Egyptian blogger who writes as Sandmonkey posted text accounts on Twitter and photographs on Yfrog. Sandmonkey/YfrogEgyptian protesters and riot police outside the press syndicate in Cairo on Wednesday. Sandmonkey/YfrogProtesters are seen breaking through police barriers in Cairo on Wednesday.
Ms. Egypt’s Autocrats Exploited Internet’s Weaknesses. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images A poster in Cairo called for the return of Internet connectivity after the government shut it down on Feb. 1. The blackout was lifted after just five days, and it did not save President . But it has mesmerized the worldwide technical community and raised concerns that with unrest coursing through the Middle East, other autocratic governments — many of them already known to interfere with and filter specific Web sites and e-mails — may also possess what is essentially a kill switch for the Internet. Because the Internet’s legendary robustness and ability to route around blockages are part of its basic design, even the world’s most renowned network and telecommunications engineers have been perplexed that the Mubarak government succeeded in pulling the maneuver off.
But now, as Egyptian engineers begin to assess fragmentary evidence and their own knowledge of the Egyptian Internet’s construction, they are beginning to understand what, in effect, hit them. The Political Power of Social Media. On January 17, 2001, during the impeachment trial of Philippine President Joseph Estrada, loyalists in the Philippine Congress voted to set aside key evidence against him. Less than two hours after the decision was announced, thousands of Filipinos, angry that their corrupt president might be let off the hook, converged on Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, a major crossroads in Manila.
The protest was arranged, in part, by forwarded text messages reading, "Go 2 EDSA. Wear blk. " The crowd quickly swelled, and in the next few days, over a million people arrived, choking traffic in downtown Manila. The public's ability to coordinate such a massive and rapid response -- close to seven million text messages were sent that week -- so alarmed the country's legislators that they reversed course and allowed the evidence to be presented. Estrada's fate was sealed; by January 20, he was gone. To continue reading, please log in. Don't have an account? Register Register for free to continue reading. From Innovation to Revolution. AN ABSENCE OF EVIDENCEMalcolm Gladwell While reading Clay Shirky's "The Political Power of Social Media" (January/February 2011), I was reminded of a trip I took just over ten years ago, during the dot-com bubble.
I went to the catalog clothier Lands' End in Wisconsin, determined to write about how the rise of the Internet and e-commerce was transforming retail. What I learned was that it was not. Having a Web site, I was told, was definitely an improvement over being dependent entirely on a paper catalog and a phone bank. But it was not a life-changing event. After all, taking someone's order over the phone is not that much harder than taking it over the Internet. The lesson here is that just because innovations in communications technology happen does not mean that they matter; or, to put it another way, in order for an innovation to make a real difference, it has to solve a problem that was actually a problem in the first place. MALCOLM GLADWELL is a Staff Writer for The New Yorker. One Libyan Battle Is Fought in Social and News Media.
Social Media's Impotence During the Turmoil in Libya and Japan - Peter Osnos - Technology. Even in our digital age, change often comes sweepingly, powerfully and from forces far more lasting than 140 characters could ever be. In early March, I attended a roundtable at the Paley Center for Media called "The Fourth Estate in a Digital Democracy. " Only a few weeks later, that gathering and the countless others like it (celebrating the prominence of social media) have been given a chastening lesson.
The centerpiece of the discussion was the role of Facebook and Twitter in the unfolding revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and, in its early days then, Libya, with ripples elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East. The essence of the issue came down to the positions of two media celebrities who were not actually present but had this exchange in the current Foreign Affairs: "Even the increased sophistication and force of state reaction," wrote Clay Shirky, "underline the basic point: these tools alter the dynamics of the public sphere. Image: Reuters/Steve Crisp. The Fourth Estate in a Digital Democracy. Bio Floyd Abrams Floyd Abrams is a member of the Firm's Executive Committee and its litigation practice group.
Rafat Ali Rafat Ali is the CEO and founder of Skift, which is an early-stage travel intelligence startup that offers news, insight, advice, tools, and services to the travel industry and business travellers. Previously, he was the founder and CEO of paidContent and ContentNext, which he sold to the UK's Guardian News and Media in 2008, and left in 2010.
John Avlon John Avlon's new book Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America is available now by Beast Books both on the Web and in paperback. Don Baer Don Baer is worldwide vice chairman and chief strategy officer of the strategic communications firm Burson-Marsteller, chairman of research firm Penn Schoen Berland, and founder and chairman of Palisades Media Ventures, a public affairs and news media development company. Merrill Brown Merrill Brown is Principal at MMB Media LLC. Brooke Gladstone Jeff Greenfield Andrew Heyward.