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I think you should try to be a little more optimistic about where humanity and its decency are going. A brief look at some of history's atrocities should be some affirmation that, though things aren't improving by leaps and bounds, they are improving.
Some things are known: citizen journalism got somet hings wrong, some right. In a crisis, people are photographed and probably lose their privacy when they shouldn't. BUT the girl who took the pictures just came home from Iraq herself. She's dealing with her own issues. She dealt with them publicly, by tweeting her photos. She was processing information in the way young people do now, not looking for a book deal.
To me, that gives her a pass, even though I wish she hadn't done it, and I wish the person who photographed the dying Iranian woman didn't do it.
But people do things in the moment that they don't think through. And waddyaknow, they are something inappropriate or inaccurate. That's what forgiveness is for -- of Dave, of Paul, of the girl who did the tweets, and so on.
I certainly wasn't expecting a personal thank you. I'm merely pointing out that if someone's going to bemoan the degredation of society's manners then be aware when they do the very thing they are bitching about.
MG hope you had a great one!
So, cool. Be glad that you have that many people who care enough to acknowledge. I would be touched if that many people gave me well wishes. I doubt on mine there will be many, so that's nice. I guess we should all be grateful for the small things :)
To see it any other way implies that at some time human society was inherently MORE decent and that we've eroded from this point. I'd challenge you to find such a baseline. Society has had evils forever - slavery, war, prejudice, ignorance, racism, and violence. It has had heroes (many controversial - one man's freedom fighter, etc) - MLK, Ghandi, Neimoller, etc, etc. It's had villains. It's had indifference and apathy.
Hence we may even be in a "worse" cycle (and I'd probably argue that too) but I don't see this as being part of some progressive erosion of overall human decency.
Dave's post highlights what is still possible in this format: misplaced critique of perceived condition
Where both posts are thin is where each reader can view inflection -- and perhaps video being the preferred spoon fed pudding of the masses would be best suited to address concerns over this matter.
However, the -use- of video (but not of their own voices speaking to the reader per se) is exactly what sets apart the two posts for me as the reader. Paul produces a tangible example of the precise moments in our collective visual video streaming psyche that frames his argument in direct terms. Dave opts for, yes, a cranky geek.
The "fascinating" part of Dave's post? Dave essentially distilled his fear of what everything is now: people are motivated by using the pain of others for personal gain. Earth. Shattering. Stuff. Pray tell oh great teacher... where may we find more of this concept in our past?
For me, Dave's post is a reflection of his own frustration with everything except what Paul was writing about in the first place. But based on my limited experience as a reader, that's just Dave.
And you must have missed this piece...
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2009/09/22/the...
Suggest you just accept fair criticism w/o personal attacks. Longterm it would get you even more flow, imho.
http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/1492179025
http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/1556315672
http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/1556275545
http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/1559893823
http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/1742287373
there are more. need I go on? I didn't think so.
just in case you go ahead and delete some of these i'll highlight the text of the first tweet included here:
"Imho, no one from TechCrunch should comment on Twitter or their competitors, without disclaiming their business relationship with Twitter."
Winer's targets usually don't bother responding to him these days (I rarely do), but it's probably good to point out these scummy smear tactics once in a while. For the newbies.
I agree 100% with you, MG. I've watched that movie a good five times now (yes, it's pretty dumb itself, but you can't help but wonder how accurate it will be) and not only do I get a great number of laughs from the sheer stupidity of the characters and the story in general, but I also find myself cringing at the fact that I actually worry about it coming true. The logic behind the stupid people in the world breeding like crack-addled rabbits while the highly intelligent decide to wait until their careers are set (or the world is a better place, or they make more money, etc.) seems to ring true already, as evidenced by the fact that single, unemployed mother Nadya Suleman, who lives with her parents, now has 14 children that she supports with public assistance programs. Good god!
Scott E
To tie it back to your point, it's great that we have journalist tools in the hands of everyone, but bad that most people are using it for stupid, sensational, ego-driven purposes. We're in a situation of technology advancing faster than we learn how to use it responsibly.