The Internet and History

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Bob Rehak

With more than two trillion pages of information, the Internet has rapidly become the world’s biggest information archive. From a historian’s perspective, however, it presents several problems.

First, web sites come and go. Pages come and go. An active link today may yield a “file not found” error tomorrow.

Second, file formats change over time. I remember reading a story in the Smithsonian about twenty years ago. The magazine claimed at the time (just ten or fifteen years into the computer revolution), that librarians were worried about the ability to access information stored in file formats that were no longer popular. Prior to the last century, there were just two file formats in the whole of human history: rock and paper. Since the dawn of computers, there have been hundreds of thousands.

Imagine all the information lost for all time because the computing platform, operating system, and application it was created on are no longer commercially viable. The rate of innovation, while a boon to mankind on one hand, is a curse to historians on the other. But the news isn’t all bad.

Having said that, I had a personal experience recently that shows the positive side of the Internet when it comes to history. I published a series of documentary photographs that I took almost 40 years ago in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood on bobrehak.com, my photo blog. A blogger in Chicago who specializes in the history of Uptown, Joane Asala, found them and posted a link to them. They quickly went viral.

As a result, tens of thousands of people have gotten a glimpse into the past of a neighborhood that is quite different today. I had pretty good notes about where I took most of the pictures, but they were incomplete in places. So I invited readers to email me if they recognized people or places in any of the images. Numerous people emailed me about themselves or friends, and places in the images.

Yesterday, I received an email from a man who thought he recognized the architecture in a corner bar at Buena and Broadway. So I went to the street view in google maps. Bingo. The same building was still there. Everything around it had changed. Signs and trash that once littered the street were gone. They were replaced by trees. The contrast was striking. You can see it for yourself by going to the image and clicking on the link embedded in the caption.

Tools like Google Maps were intended primarily to help people navigate. But they have an unintended and quite positive consequence. They can be used to give people a wealth of information about then and now. They can be a boon to historians trying to explain the how and the why of change.

Viral Communications and the Internet

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Bob Rehak

So, we’ve all heard about viral communications … as with those videos that someone posts on YouTube. Someone sees it, tells their friends, who tell THEIR friends, who tell THEIR friends and so on. It’s kind of like in the days before the Internet when “rumors would spread like wildfire.”

Robert Rehak’s Own Mini-Viral Communication Experience

Two days ago, a lady named Joanne Asala in Chicago who edits CompassRose.org said that she had come across some photographs that I had posted on BobRehak.com. I took them in Chicago’s Uptown Neighborhood back in the mid-1970s and the focus of her blog is the history of that neighborhood.

She asked permission to post two of the photos and refer people to my site to see the rest. I agreed. She posted them late Wednesday night. When I woke up on Thursday morning, traffic on BobRehak.com had spiked. My photo site had received 800 visits by 4 am. Within 24 hours, that number had swelled to more than 8000 and the trend has continued today – with each visitor viewing an average of 13 photos.

The point of talking about this mini-viral episode is not to brag, but to point out how valuable a single link can be. Ms. Asala’s post led to several others on Facebook and as news of my “historical time capsule” (as she called it) spread throughout Chicago, my site received thousands of new visitors and tens of thousands of page views.

Ground Zero for Poverty

At one time, in the 1920s, Uptown had been a summer resort and playground for Chicago’s rich and famous. By the 1970s, the neighborhood had spiraled downward. It was ground zero for poverty. Today, it seems Uptown is lurching toward gentrification again. The photos provide an interesting historical contrast.

Many of the visitors emailed me to say how the portfolio brought back memories of growing up in the area. Some felt misty-eyed. Others wanted to purchase prints. Others wanted to know whether I had pictures of their friends in my archives. Still others emailed me about the locations in the photos and told me what they looked like today. (I now live in Houston, not Chicago.)

Positive Side Effects of Viral Communication

Thanks to Ms. Asala, I was able to meet and network with many people online that I never would have been able to meet in real life. Often I talk about the side effects of communication technology on this blog. This is one side effect that was very positive.

From a marketers point of view, viral communications can be a dream – or nightmare – come true. Which it is depends on the content of the communication being spread. Several weeks ago, I wrote a post about viral communications “gone bad.” It was a review of Steven Wyer’s compelling book about Internet defamation and invasion of privacy. His book is called Violated Online. Happily, this experience was all positive.

Lessons learned

I took three things away from this experience:

Viral communications can improve site traffic exponentially. From an average of 100 visitors a day, traffic on BobRehak.com jumped to 10,000 in a little more than 24 hours. That’s a 100x increase from just one initial link!
Quality content is what keeps viral communication going. Without friends telling their friends, referrals die out.
Perhaps marketers should spend more time improving the quality of their communication and less time carpet bombing the public with insipid ads and commercials that people ignore.

The Internet and National Referendums

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Bob Rehak

For nearly 40 years, the Gallup organization has been polling Americans about various political reforms. This morning, Gallup released another poll that showed 68% of Americans favor a national referendum on an issue if enough voters sign a petition to request a vote on it. Three Americans favored this proposal for every one who was against it. (See below.)

Many U.S. states allow voters to decide key issues directly rather than have elected representatives decide all issues. Sadly, the notion has yet to gain traction on a national level even though Internet technology would make national referendums both practical and easy.

I can envision a site called USreferendums.gov that would allow voters to sign petitions. Voter registration boards in each state could issue unique user IDs and passwords for the site to keep zealots from logging on multiple times under different names.

Any petition that got the support of, let’s say, 10% of each state’s registered voters, could be put on the next federal election ballot.

Referendums could reduce the influence of lobbyists.

In this way, we might pass legislation that represents the public’s interest rather than special interests. After several mass murders late last year, bills were introduced to ban assault rifles and high capacity ammo clips. Another proposal called for more thorough background checks on gun purchasers. Both had overwhelming public support. And both went down in flames. A national referendum on these issues would have had a much different outcome.

So here we are, Bubba. We let psychos buy assault rifles to kill children. But we don’t give citizens the right to vote on proposals that could save them. What’s wrong with this picture? Perhaps its time for a national referendum on national referendums.

To be clear, I’m not proposing that we cut legislators out of the loop. Someone still needs to formulate legislation.

The biggest issue I see: How do we determine which petitions get put on USreferendums.gov?

Regarding this last point, I modestly suggest that when public opinion polls differ from legislative outcomes by a wide margin, it’s time for a public referendum. This would keep everybody honest, make government more responsive, and still allow legislators to handle the vast majority of work.

The Internet can now provide the same kind of check-and-balance, watchdog function over government that the professional press does. There’s an opportunity here to make democracy more democratic. We should take it. In my opinion, we should begin a series of national referendums on important issues when Congress fails to represent wishes of the public.

The Internet and Free Speech

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Bob Rehak

The Internet brought self-publishing to the common man. That may have done more for free speech than the First Amendment. But all that unfettered freedom has a dark side, too. The freedom to lie. The freedom to libel. The freedom to make false allegations. The freedom to bully. The freedom to invade privacy. And the freedom to destroy competitors, ex-lovers, neighbors with yapping dogs, 14-year-old girls having bad-hair days, the cop who gave you a ticket for doing 90 in a school zone, and the overworked waitress who took too long to refill your iced tea.

Having fun yet? Oh, I forgot the freedom to do it all anonymously.

As a writer, I’ve always believed that Free Speech is the most important freedom Americans have. But I’ve also come to believe in recent years that the greatest threat to Free Speech is people who lie and libel with impunity online.

Before the “irresponsibles” spoil it for all of us, we need to draw a line in the sand, Dude. That line is Truth with a capital T. Yes, I know Truth isn’t always black or white. But let’s leave the shades of gray out of this for the moment and consider only one of the extremes. Should anyone have the right to damage you with blatant, outright lies?

Any reasonable person would take a New York nanosecond to shout “NO!” But sadly the answer is “YES” – at least in the free-fire zone called the Internet.

Have you ever been caught in the cross-fire? Sorry, Bucky. You’re collateral damage to a higher cause – Free Speech.

If you want to read a real-life horror story filled with the sad sagas of dozens of victims, read a book called Violated Online: How Online Slander Can Destroy Your Life by Steven Wyer. It should be required reading for anyone with Internet access and a voter registration card. That includes judges and legislators.

Mr. Wyer’s sobering book contains numerous examples of how people’s lives have been ruined by a perfect storm of new, converging laws, technologies and trends, such as:

Anti-SLAPP statutes
Internet anonymity
Social networks that facilitate viral communications
Anonymous text bots that relentlessly record the location of every piece of information on the Internet whether it is true or false.
Online information archives, such as the Library of Congress, that dutifully store false allegations
Search engines that lead people directly to those lies for decades

Want to see how easy it is to damage someone? Just visit any complaint site like RipoffReport.com, AbusiveMen.com, PissedOff.com or DatingPsychos.com. Anyone can start a vicious rumor about someone he or she doesn’t like, such as the poor kid in class who wore mismatching socks, a competitor, or political opponent. The bigger the lie, the faster and farther it spreads. And once it’s gone viral, it’s impossible to stop.

Want to see how long you can keep the fun going? Read the story on Snopes.com about an email circulating since 2005. It lists compensation details of CEOs of major charities. Only one problem: the information is bogus. Who knows how much suffering this email caused by diverting badly needed contributions from those in need!

In Texas, at least one politician has already used the state’s new anti-SLAPP statute as a shield to attack private citizens. Texas courts have upheld the politician’s right to do so. And the Texas governor vetoed an ethics bill last month that contained a provision that would have made it more difficult for politicians to attack private citizens anonymously.

A growing body of research underscores how psychology as well as technology can fuel the persistence of misinformation and “belief echoes.” Most people tend to continue believing misinformation even after it has been proven untrue. Most often, attempts to expose lies actually strengthen belief in the misinformation.

The Internet is like an echo chamber. When social networks pick up the news and the Library of Congress archives all the Tweets about you, you suddenly become a Number One search result on Google, sentenced to a virtual pillory for life without due process.

Your phone stops ringing. Your friends shun you. Even your dog pees on your rug. It’s game over, Bubba. So what if they lied! They got to vent.

Want to clean up this mess? A good start would be to teach kids NEVER to trust people using pseudonyms online. Perhaps someday we could even make the use of online pseudonyms illegal. If people fear they might be held accountable for damaging lies, they might think twice before publishing them to the world.

Online Predators

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Bob Rehak

ABC13 News ran a story this week about a child predator putting up an ad on Craigslist to lure teenage girls. A Harris County Precinct 4 constable posing as a 14-year old girl nabbed the man when he requested the constable to send him “naughty pics” and solicited sex. The constable tracked the man to his phone via an IP address distributed from his company’s WIFI network. Authorities say this is a disturbing trend that’s growing exponentially – targeting young girls online. So I did a little research.

InternetSafety101.org says that “Often, we have an image of sexual predators lurking around school playgrounds or hiding behind bushes scoping out their potential victims, but the reality is that today’s sexual predators search for victims while hiding behind a computer screen, taking advantage of the anonymity the Internet offers.”

NetSmartz.org says, “Although the Internet did not create child predators, it has significantly increased the opportunities predators have to meet victims while minimizing detection.”

InternetSafety101.org published these 2010 statistics from the Journal of Adolescent Health:

Only 18% of youth use chat rooms, however, the majority of Internet-initiated sex crimes against children are initiated in chat rooms.
In 82% of online sex crimes against minors, the offender used the victim’s social networking site to gain information about the victim’s likes and dislikes.
65% of online sex offenders used the victim’s social networking site to gain home and school information about the victim.
26% of online sex offenders used the victim’s social networking site to gain information about the victim’s whereabouts at a specific time.

Microsoft advises that parents can help protect their kids by knowing the risks related to online communication and being involved in their kids’ Internet activities. The company points out that online predators:

Find kids through social networking, blogs, chat rooms, instant messaging, email, discussion boards, and other websites.
Seduce their targets through attention, affection, kindness, and even gifts.
Know the latest music and hobbies likely to interest kids.
Listen to and sympathize with kids’ problems.
Try to ease young people’s inhibitions by gradually introducing sexual content into their conversations or by showing them sexually explicit material.
Might also evaluate the kids they meet online for future face-to-face contact.

So how can your kids reduce the risk of being victimized? Precautions that kids can take, include:

Never downloading images from an unknown source.
Using email filters.
Telling an adult immediately if anything that happens online makes them feel uncomfortable or frightened.
Choosing a gender-neutral screen name that doesn’t contain sexually suggestive words or reveal personal information.
Never revealing personal information about themselves (including age and gender) or information about their family to anyone online and not filling out online personal profiles.
Stopping any email communication, instant messaging conversations, or chats if anyone starts to ask questions that are too personal or sexually suggestive.
Posting the family online agreement near the computer to remind them to protect their privacy on the Internet.

If your child is being targeted, the FBI advises:

Contact your local police. Save any documentation including email addresses, website addresses, and chat logs to share with the police.
Check your computer for pornographic files or any type of sexual communication—these are often warning signs.
Monitor your child’s access to all live electronic communications, such as chat rooms, instant messaging, and email.

For more information, see the FBI’s publication: A Parent’s Guide to Internet Safety.

The Internet and Virtual Pajama Parties

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Bob Rehak

I have a single friend in Seattle who is redefining “social media.” She is one of those cutting-edge Internet users who is always one of the first to discover new ways to use the medium. She told me last week about a novel practice (for me at least) that she and her cross-country coterie of girlfriends have: virtual pajama parties via the Internet.

Every week at an appointed time, they all log on to the Internet together to watch a video. Because they live in four different time zones, this requires some coordination.

They all pop their popcorn beforehand. Then they cuddle up with their laptops on the couch. They log into a video chatroom and establish connectivity. They pull up a streaming movie in a second window. Then on cue, they all hit “play” simultaneously. Throughout the movie, they comment on the action. “He’s hot.” “Can you believe she said that?” “What a dirt-bag!” “Do you think they’ll …?” When the movie is over, they continue chatting for a while before logging off and going to bed.

Some of the people in this group have never met in real life. They found each other online at a blog for writers and became friends by virtue of their mutual interests.

When I was a kid, people talked a lot about how television was replacing the fireplace as the center of American family life. Now the Internet is replacing the television and the “family” can be scattered around the globe.

Reporting Suspicious Activities at iWatchTX.org

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Bob Rehak

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is now encouraging residents to report suspicious behaviors that might indicate criminal or terrorist activity to the department’s iWATCH website at www.iwatchTX.org.

The DPS website collects citizen-sourced information to help thwart illegal endeavors, including terrorist actions.

“DPS works with federal, state and local law enforcement to combat crime and terrorism within Texas and beyond. With the help of the public, we can be even more successful,” said DPS Director Steven McCraw. “Residents can join our crime-fighting efforts – and possibly save lives – by remaining vigilant and promptly reporting any suspicious or criminal activities they might witness.”

Citizens can fill out reports on the website about a particular incident, usually in fewer than five minutes. Once submitted, each report is reviewed by law enforcement analysts.

Examples of the behaviors and activities that DPS is interested in include:

Strangers asking questions about building security features and procedures.
Briefcase, suitcase, backpack or package is left behind.
Cars or trucks are left in no-parking zones at important buildings.
Chemical smells or fumes that are unusual for the location.
People requesting sensitive information, such as blueprints, security plans or VIP travel schedules, without a need to know.
Purchasing supplies that could be used to make bombs or weapons, or purchasing uniforms without having the proper credentials.
Taking photographs or videos of security features, such as cameras or check points.

Preparations for Terrorist Attacks Often Seen but Seldom Reported

DPS urges residents who see something unusual to simply speak up. Preparations for terrorist attacks are often seen, but rarely reported. When in doubt, report the suspicious activity through iWATCH. For more information on the iWATCH program or to submit a report, visit www.iwatchTX.org.

The iwatchTX.org website is part of the DPS Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division (ICT), which serves as the central clearinghouse for the collection, management, analysis and dissemination of law enforcement and homeland security intelligence in Texas.

Assisting 1500 Law Enforcement Agencies

The intelligence gathered assists more than 1,500 local law enforcement agencies including the Counterterrorism Analysis Program; State Intelligence Assessment Program; Texas 10 Most Wanted Fugitive and Sex Offender programs; Operation Drawbridge border camera program; Missing and Exploited Children Unit; Interdiction for the Protection of Children Program; Gang Analysis Section; and Critical Infrastructure and Key Resource Tracking and Assessment Program; Texas Rangers. The information also assists in investigations involving cartels, gangs, human trafficking and sex offenders.

Global Awareness and Extremism

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Bob Rehak

Does the global awareness, made possible by electronic media, foster extremism?

After the Marathon bombing, I got into a discussion about extremists with some friends. It was prompted by the killings of so many innocent people in Boston. And Newtown. And Aurora. And Virginia Tech. And 9/11. And Oklahoma City. And. And.

Like many people, in the days after such incidents, I asked myself, “What could possibly lead someone to do that?” I began to wonder if this was another case of “All the world’s a stage.” Certainly, the killings took place on a world stage. The timing, location and media coverage ensured that.

I wonder to what degree the publicity provided an incentive to the terrorists. Were they out to make a name for themselves within the Jihadist community? That’s certainly a possible motive for the crime.

The alleged perpetrators also reportedly used the Internet to learn how to make bombs. So in this case, the Internet may have also provided the method.

Another story involving the Internet also made headlines this week. Yesterday, a hacker broke into the Associated Press twitter account. The hacker posted a false story claiming the White House had been bombed and that the President was injured. The hoax triggered a wave of computer-related stock selling on Wall Street. The Dow dropped more than 170 points in minutes. The stock market loss exceeded $200 billion. Even though the market itself rebounded when the hoax was discovered, it is not clear how individual investors fared. Depending on the timing of individual sell and buy executions, investors could have made large profits or been wiped out.

Yet another story about the Internet and terrorism broke today. A teenager from the Chicago suburb of Aurora was arraigned on terrorism charges. The FBI accused the American-born man of seeking to join an al-Qaeda-affiliated organization through a website which the FBI itself set up as a sting operation. The site urged readers to “join your lion brothers… fighting under the true banner of Islam”. Ethical questions aside, the incident illustrates how the Web can be used effectively to recruit would-be terrorists to extremist causes.

My Take

I believe that electronic media – especially the Internet – can foster extremism for several reasons:

Electronic media provide instantaneous global publicity, a powerful lure for people who consider themselves to be outcasts, downtrodden or powerless.
The global publicity of acts of terrorism multiples the fear inspired by the original acts, another powerful lure for would-be terrorists.
The Internet provides a high degree of anonymity. This removes much of the fear of getting caught.
The ease of Internet publishing provides a vehicle for extremist groups to recruit.
Non-existent editorial standards on the Internet allow the publication of manuals on how to make bombs, poisons, etc. that any child can find.
The Internet provides a way for people with extreme interests to find each other and form groups. Feeling that “I’m not alone” can remove social constraints that might otherwise inhibit people from taking violent action.
The Internet itself is a vehicle for committing many crimes. Without twitter, the stock market calamity would not have happened.

Electronic media amplify the voices of extremists on the fringes of society and give them an unequal “share of voice.” “Ordinary people doing ordinary things” does not constitute “news”; planting bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon does. It guarantees worldwide publicity for weeks. That’s a ticket to immortality for the lost and lonely, the alienated antis, and those who feel bitter or betrayed.