YPSILANTI, Mich.- With the development of new technologies like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, it is easier than ever to reach out to people across the country and even through out the world to fulfill the unique human obsession of “social networking.”
The most common definition of social networking has something to do with technology, but if you really think about the words that make up the term, you might find that, even before the internet, computers and BlackBerrys, we all still had social networks made up of our friends, family and colleagues.
In Clay Shirkey’s ” It Takes a Village to Find a Phone,” Evan Guttman, the friend of Ivanna, a woman who lost her SideKick cell phone in a New York City taxi cab, uses his already established network of friends and acquaintances to track down and find the teenage girl who ended up with the phone.
The complexity and extent of the human network in the age of technology is astounding. People use to play the celebrity-themed game ” Six Degrees of Separation” where you would try to find a celebrity who can be separated by more than six relationships from Kevin Bacon, and it was fairly difficult to do.
Now, you can play that game with anyone from anywhere and connect them, through their social network, to just about anyone on the planet, though it may take more than six degrees to make a connection. But, in ” It Takes a Village to Find a Phone,” the connections that were unearthed to find and retrieve the lost/stolen phone created a level of attention that had some unintended consequences.
Guttman turned the effort to find the phone and get it back from the teenage girl who possessed it, perhaps unintentionally, into a witch-hunt to avenge a perceived crime against his friend.
The unique circumstance of knowing who had the phone and knowing that she and her family did not intend to return it, made people following Guttman’s campaign to get it back take the hostage-takers’ position personally.
The concept of the “one-person media outlet” in this situation unfolded in the willingness of individual followers of the campaign to investigate and gather information that not only provided information to Guttman, but also added fresh angles to what became a national and international story.
The eventual return of the cell phone and the arrest of the girl who had it, raised a few questions. Was it ethical to gang up on a teenage girl, making an example of her, humiliating her, potentially perpetuating racial stereotypes and highlighting the disparity between classes in American society?
Perhaps not, but it does show what the social nature of human beings, mixed with the latest technologies, is capable of doing. There are undoubtedly better ways to utilize social networks. This just happens to be a case-study in how much power people can have if they work together.
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