Posted on 10 November 2009

“Two weeks ago, I wrote here about how the ‘real time web’ is turning all of us into inhuman egotists. How we’re increasingly seeing people at the scene of major accidents grabbing their cellphones to capture the dramatic events and share them with their friends, rather than calling 911. Last week I went even further with my doom-mongering, suggesting that the trend of adding people’s homes to Foursquare without permission was indicative of a generation that prioritised their own fun over the privacy of their friends.
In the actions of Tearah Moore at Fort Hood, we have the perfect example of both kinds of selfishness.
There surely can’t be a human being left in the civilised world who doesn’t know that cellphones must be switched off in hospitals, and yet not only did Moore leave hers on but she actually used it to photograph patients, and broadcast the images to the world. Just think about that for a second. Rather than offering to help the wounded, or getting the hell out of the way of those trying to do their jobs, Moore actually pointed a cell-phone at a wounded soldier, uploaded it to twitpic and added a caption saying that the victim “got shot in the balls”.”

The above quotation makes it look like more of an indictment of an individual than it actually is; he is just using Ms. Moore as an example of a trend that is everywhere from the cellphone shots of British subway bombings to YouTube footage from Iran– people are watching, not helping.

After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth »
also from Carr: Weezer, plane crashes and everything else that’s worrying about the real-time web »

Filed under: ideas, media, social media, technology