How not to disagree

I read Colin Rule’s post and the article which it links to just after I read Java’s missive on the amount of abuse some of us face on (Sri Lankan) blogs. Colin and I have been associated with initiatives to introduce a modicum of civility into online discussions, a topic that interests me deeply.

This is also not the first time I’ve responded to a post by Java on this topic of online abuse in the SL blogosphere.

On the other hand, there was the recent story of someone killing himself because of content published online and ways that actually encourage people to be spiteful on social networking sites like Facebook.

I guess where I disagree with Paul Graham’s article is how it ends – “Most people don’t really enjoy being mean; they do it because they can’t help it.“

That may well be true in some cases. But most, if not all the instances of hate speech and abuse I face daily in response to what I write or edit are by those who engage in such behaviour by careful deliberation and choice.

For just one example out of many I have faced, I find it impossible to believe an Editor of a leading mainstream English newspaper in Sri Lanka couldn’t help but write this. Clearly, there are those in Sri Lanka who use a language of hate and harm to hide their own significant personal insecurities, fears and parochial aims. Perhaps like Java we should feel sorry for them,

“In the end, however, I guess we should feel sorry for these folks, as the dirt they dish out must fill their heads a whole lot – and that can’t be very pleasant for them.”

Also read:
A conversation with Indi Samarajiva
The end of Moju – But conversations go on…
Blogging Code of Conduct: Does one size fit all?

Statement on Respectful Online Communication

Bullard on blogging: How not to be civil online
Beyond O’Reilly’s online civility dictum: Fostering healthy debate on the web and internet

New York City clamps down on SMS and mobile phone activism

Mr. Hirsch said that the idea for TXTmob evolved from conversations about how police departments were adopting strategies to counter large-scale marches that converged at a single spot.

While preparing for the 2004 political conventions in New York and Boston, some demonstrators decided to plan decentralized protests in which small, mobile groups held rallies and roamed the streets.

“The idea was to create a very dynamic, fluid environment,” Mr. Hirsch said. “We wanted to transform areas around the entire city into theaters of dissent.”

Tad Hirsch, who created a system that allowed users to form networks and transmit SMS messages to hundreds or thousands of mobile telephones called TXTmob, received a subpoena to hand over all remaining records of communications using the system in August 2004 to organise protests against the Republican Convention.

Kind of thing you’ll expect to hear about in Sri Lanka or Zimbabwe.

In the Philippines, large scale demonstrations organized via cell phones and SMS were a major factor in forcing President Joseph Estrada to resign, thus bringing about change without large-scale violence. And this is the most known example amongst many others.

Question is whether these measures to interrogate new media / technologies with the aim of vitiating their subversive power can really, over the long term, make any real impact in a world where tech innovation is growing too fast for the parochialism of Governments to contain.