Tyler Clementi’s body was pulled from the Hudson River on September 29th, 2010, a week after he had changed his Facebook status to read “jumping off gw bridge sorry.” That same day, Gawker (“Today’s Gossip is Tomorrow’s News) posted a screen shot of Dharun Ravi’s Twitter account, with Ravi’s tweets about spying on Clementi highlighted: I dare you to video chat me from 9:30 to 12 Ravi is now on...
So, here’s where we are on the timeline: it’s 6:44pm (1:44PM, EST)*, the day before Tyler Clementi commits suicide and Clementi has just posted to the “college roommate spying” thread on Just Us Boys that he will speak to the dorm RA that night. cit2mo’s next post is Wednesday, September 22nd, 4:38AM (Tuesday, September 21st, 11:38PM). It’s fair to say that it is full of surprises. Although there have been...
So, here’s the challenge. Say you wanted to use your computer to spy on someone else, how would you do it? We saw in the previous post that, if you were trying this circa 2000, the technological challenges would be beyond the reach of your average computer user. ) It turns out that in 2010, the Web 2.0 world makes this a relatively easy task. First, assume possession of an Apple laptop. (Why this assumption is made will be clarified...
My Facebook inbox contained a friend request this morning from a young woman who has three profile pix, including this one: Friend Request, Blurring Added I don’t know her and don’t believe I’ve ever seen her. When I received the request, we had no “mutual friends”–meaning none of my 174 friends on Facebook is friends with her (two hours after the request, the young woman and I now have “1 mutual...
“This is not a ‘phone,’” Dr. Englander told the parents who looked, collectively, shellshocked. What you’ve given your child “is a mobile computer.” This quote comes from “As Bullies Go Digital, Parents Play Catchup,” the latest cage-rattling piece in the Times’ ongoing coverage of technology’s disruptive influence on the family. It’s easy enough to interpret parental cluelessness of...
