miércoles, enero 25, 2006

 

Texting

It is not talked about much these days because it has already become an unexceptional part of daily life, but the popularity of text messaging just goes on and on.

The SMS revolution has opened up an entirely new layer of communication between people with its own codes, language and conventions. It is one of the fastest-growing consumer products ever and all the more remarkable because it was never intended to happen. Mobile phone owners discovered they could utilise a part of the phone reserved for engineers to communicate with each other. The rest is history. Not all texting is benign. In Australia texts were recently used to orchestrate racist meetings and in China, the world's biggest cellphone market, there are reportedly 2,800 surveillance centres to monitor traffic. Overall, though, texting is a force for good, expanding the freedom to do things including cross-generational conversations, dating, voting in game shows, writing poetry, alerting passengers to aircraft delays, launching marketing campaigns or simply adding a little extra to the everyday joys of conversation. Even when the text news is bad, we should not simply blame the messenger.

In praise of ... texting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/article/0,,1671779,00.html
Leader
Wednesday December 21, 2005
The Guardian

martes, enero 24, 2006

 

Happy slapping: Performatividad criminal

Tribus urbanas, Tecnología 3G y Acciones destructivas de moda:

Happy slapping is the term used to describe a recent fad whereby a person, or group of persons slap an unsuspecting victim (usually women or lone men) while an accomplice films the assault using any form of video recording device, most commonly as camera phone or a smart phone. It is thought to have first become popular in South London, but it has now spread across Europe and North America.

Although the concept of filming a crime is an old one, the ease and general availability of video cameras in mobile phones means that such attacks need not be planned carefully beforehand and are more easily watched and circulated afterwards. Some political and media commentators have alleged that the craze is inspired by television programmes such as Jackass and Dirty Sanchez. Others have attempted to have the issue viewed and treated as a moral panic.

Happy slapping can often become more violent than a mere slap, and may include a strike or even a physical attack. Sometimes the assault is performed with other crimes, such as mugging and rape. Other much more vicious variations of the "happy slap" have also been reported, at least one of which has resulted in the death of the victim.

In December 2005, a 15 year old girl, Chelsea O'Mahoney—initially not named in the media because of legal reasons, this later changed at the sentencing to "name and shame" her [1]—and her co-defendants Reece Sargeant, 21, Darren Case, 18, and a youth, David Blenman, 17, were all found guilty of the manslaughter of David Morley near Waterloo Station, in London. Barry Lee, 20, and another 17-year-old were cleared of all charges. "The 15 year old girl had told Morley that she was making a documentary about 'happy slapping' before her gang of friends kicked him to death."


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