Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Facebook murder

Murder by Facebook, or murder with Facebook.  Murder alongside Facebook?  Whatever it is, the link is found in this Australian story.

What started as a Facebook message from a former boyfriend has ended in the gruesome murder of Sarah Elston, a talented young Brisbane artist.

This blogger's response is worth quoting in full:

What I find appalling about this headline - and to a lesser degree the article - is that it makes Facebook out to be in some culpable in Sarah Elston's death.  When in fact the former boyfriend could have contacted her in any number of ways.  If it was by phone, would the headline be "Telephone Murder"?  Or if it was by email, would it be "Email Murder"?  Fax, letter, postcard?  Well, you get my point.  It sends the wrong message about Facebook entirely as it demonises it as it suggests Facebook was somehow responsible for this tragedy.  The only thing this really says about Facebook is that it is a new way of communicating between friends.  That hardly makes Facebook a murderer.

I like the comment about naming one a "Telstra murder."

Even better, it turns out the murderer had no Facebook connection to the victim.

Question: how is Facebook horror different from MySpace horror?

(thanks to Sean Fitzgerald)

The scary Google search phrase

Google search terms can be scary things, at least if you attach them to a murder case.  Consider this AFP lede:

A Briton accused of murdering his American wife and baby daughter made an Internet search on 'how to kill with a knife' just six days before their bodies were found...

It's a great line, uncannily linking the innocent search box with vile murder.  It might not mean much, actually, next to (say) physical evidence, or the more useful testimony which shows up further down in the less sexy parts of the article.  And the two victims were killed by a gun, not a knife.  But Google Gothic makes for a keen storyline.

The report follows up on another classic element of cyberfear, deviant sexuality:

Assistant District Attorney Daniel Bennett told the court that records showed the suspect had searched the Internet for female escorts only hours before the murders.

What a juicy tidbit to share with us!  Sex and murder, plus search.

Google horror is a growing subgenre of digital fear, developing alongside MySpace Gothic and mobile device horror stories.  Previous Infocult posts: real horror of losing data, FOG="Fear Of Google", beware the Google death ray, Googlestalking, Google surveillance story,

Google even uses the horror trope itself (hence the picture above).

(thanks to arch-searcher Sean Collins)

Internet addiction: moving towards the next DSM

At least one person has proposed adding internet addiction to the DSM, ye large tome of mental disorders.

In the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Jerald Block proposed that Web abuse be added to his field's bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Block cites research from South Korea, where, he says, the affliction is considered a serious public health problem, and the government estimates that 168,000 children may require psychotropic medications. In China, the Beijing Military Region Central Hospital puts the number of teenage pathological computer users at 10 million.

We've been onto this internet addiction idea for years.  Many previous posts from here.

(thanks to Todd Bryant for the nudge)

Death by mobile phone! Or maybe not.

Mobile phones could be triggering suicides!  Or perhaps they don't. 

In another twist in mobile device fear, a British paper publishes claims that a group of Welsh suicides occurred suspiciously close to mobile phone masts ("cell phone towes" in Americanese).  Coincidence?

The article then goes on, ominously, to suggest just how far this can go:

There are now 70 million mobile phone handsets in the UK and around 50,000 masts. Both emit radio signals and electromagnetic fields that can penetrate the brain, and for many years campaigners have argued that this could seriously damage people’s health.

Cue ominous background music.

The Bad Science blog explores the article's claims.  By "explores" we mean "tears to flimsy shreds, shreds carried off in the slightest breeze."  There's no paper.  No data.  In fact, there isn't any research.

So once again a media outlet runs with a cyberfear story, leaving reality behind.  Watch for this claim to be repeated, though, perhaps in fiction, maybe in urban legend, or in policy discussions.

(via Pharyngula)

Gordon Brown's "The Raven"

The Now Show did a great routine, inserting Gordon Brown into Poe's "The Raven."

Still looking for a public archive version...

Another hoax producing more stories: I, Libertine

I, Libertine is one of those productive hoaxes, an idea which gives rise to stories.  WFMU's blog lays out the background:

Overnight WOR-AM radio show host Jean Shepherd asked his listeners ("the Night People") to go into bookstores and ask for a book that didn't exist. Armed with a fictitious title and author, along with a vague plot outline, the Night People got their hooks in wherever they could. Fueled by bewildered bookstore owners and distributors, I, Libertine eventually did end up as a genuine bestseller.

According to a later interview with Shepherd (mp3), the hoax was targeted at New Yorkers' obsession with lists and rankings.  Ballantine Books hired Theodore Sturgeon to write the novel itself (he banged out a draft, then one of the Ballantines finished it) (1956).  Kelly Freas did the jokey cover (pictured here, thanks to Wikimedia).  So the paperback entered the circulatory system of bookselling and book owning, the hoax entering real life, Tlön landing on Earth.

The Web, 1.0 and 2.0, is generous: here are scans of different covers, front and back, all tasty.  Here's the entire novel, read out loud in podcasts.

Another story to file under alternate reality game antecedents.

Social nodalities: Engestrom on social objects, peripheral vision, and the mobile

Jyri Engestrom speaks to social objects and social nodalities: David Weinberger's account.  It's a fascinating set of notes, with some typically great points:

• Verbs for social objects: we need to think about the verbs that people perform on objects. E.g., Flickr’s aggregation of what people have done with your photos. We should be surfacing the available actions.
• World of Warcraft's information methods for everyday life: “Imagine a physical world where we have as much peripheral information at our disposal as in WoW.” Not just “boring update feeds.” Innovate, especially on mobiles. We will see this stuff in the next 24 months. Some examples: Maps: Where my friends are. Phonebook: what are people up to. Email: prioritized. Photos: Face recognition.
• A new take on social search: Detecting nodal points: “What should I be aware of that’s happening around me? Was what just happened significant to someone on the network.” And then deliver it to people at just the right time, perhaps via push. “Discovery is becoming social.” “It is the end of the era of search,” i.e., of querying for stuff. From browser to search to share (citing former ceo of paypal). From pagerank to “facerank” where what counts is friends in common, physical proximity, shared taste, shared objects.

And yes, did you catch the bit about upcoming Googleosity, "We will see this stuff in the next 24 months"?  From Jyri's site: "Tonight we demonstrated Jaiku running on Google App Engine..."

Has anyone posted a fuller report?

Fire-wielding lunar biped beavers: the triumph of hoax as storytelling

Another great hoax literature story is the 1835 Moon Hoax.  This consisted of a series of articles in the New York Sun (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), purporting to describe discoveries made by the great astronomer Sir John Herschel. Said discoveries are quite elaborate.  The whole thing is glorious fun, nineteenth-century science fiction, imagining a selenic ecosystem:

It described a lunar topography that included vast forests, inland seas, and lilac-hued quartz pyramids. Readers learned that herds of bison wandered across the plains of the moon; that blue unicorns perched on its hilltops; and that spherical, amphibious creatures rolled across its beaches. The highpoint of the narrative came when it revealed that Herschel had found evidence of intelligent life on the moon: he had discovered both a primitive tribe of hut-dwelling, fire-wielding biped beavers, and a race of winged humans living in pastoral harmony around a mysterious, golden-roofed temple. Herschel dubbed these latter creatures the Vespertilio-homo, or "man-bat".

Naturally this was all presented as fact, and never really retracted.  Herschel apparently said little about it in public.  The story slid into American pop culture, like any successful hoax.

Edgar Allen Poe followed up with two moon hoax tales of his own, right away in "The Unparalleled Adventure Of One Hans Pfaall" (1835) and, later on, "The Balloon-Hoax" (1844).

File this under alternate reality game antecedents.

(via MetaFilter)

Is that fifth major or minor?

Best topical, severed-body-part-themed name for a band this month: Severed Fifth.

(thanks to shambling Steven B)

Reading in mid-summer

Someone asked me what I was reading this summer.  I don't have a list yet. I've been reading kinda haphazardly. But here's a shot. 

I'm finishing up:

Cory Doctorow, Little Brother
Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories

Getting ready for:

Christopher Tyerman, God's War: A New History of the Crusades
Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
Moore, Crossing the Chasm
Katz et al, Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies
Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke
One book on beekeeping.
A book on building earth ovens.
Hopefully some new Gene Wolfe.