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Goodbye, getting to act like a total dick online. (Unless that’s working for you, player.)

Aug 24th, 2009
by Robert N. Lee.

A couple of stories floating around the last few days, I keep getting reminded to write something down I’ve been thinking about since the first time I played with Wikitude, last month.

First, yeah, Twitter’s going to add geolocation data to tweets, if you want it:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2009/tc20090823_834450.htm

And despite the sharp intake of breath you may have made on reading that, yeah, people are going to want it. A lot of people. You can already do this, actually, through Tweetmondo and other services, enter your location data. But Tweetmondo just registers you at your home or other address. It doesn’t use GPS and other data from your smart phone to tell people where you are right now. That’s what software using this new API from Twitter is going to do.

A minority of Twitter users are on Tweetmondo, but…still. I downloaded the new augmented reality app/platform, Layar, last week, and the first filter I tried was Tweetmondo. I can turn around in my living room and get a grid expanding into a distance I can’t see, and laid over that are all the Tweetmondo-using Twitters Tweeting, represented as little Twitter-blue pushpins with birdies on them. I can push on the pins and…do whatever you do from there, check that person out, start following them, whatever.

I could, right now, go turn on my phone and start following (on Twitter) a particular woman I noticed the other day, playing around, solely because she lives about ten blocks away from me. That would be the prompt, not a shared interest or cross of comments online – I saw she lived near me, I can add her to my Twitter follow list just because of that.

That still seems sort of odd to me, doing that. Plus, she was very young and not really given to saying anything that interested me. So…not into being the older guy who follows the prettiest twenty-year-old girls in his neighborhood. But I could be, just that easily, and this is simply going to explode.

Second, speaking of sex:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/23/twitt-sex-because-everything-popular-needs-a-sex-clone/

So did you ever see Logan’s Run?

Because that’s coming, a totally natural consequence of the tech I just showed you, which I can turn on any time I want. In two or three years, the numbers of people who can also are going to be staggering, and then it’s going to be everybody who can do it.

And no, I don’t mean the Willy Wonka teleporting TV in the movie, but…something like “The Circuit,” meaning thousands upon thousands of interlocking Circuits within Circuits is going to be an easy extension of the ways this tech is already used to hook up. Boys and girls are going to rely on flagging that they can turn on when they’ve turned all signs to “YES,” and then he or she will be able to see where you live and get a walking path spelled out or a Tom Tom guide. There are going to be dedicated software and services, just for this. And then we’ll see what happens in 2011.

I can already write the urban legends and scary Dateline NBC stories in my head, and OMG is this going to change prostitution forever.

I wonder about the online ragers of the future, though. The worst examples of online rageaholism already show no scruples about taking petty online shit offline. How about if the dumbshit Republican you just creamed with your rapier intellect about health care reform can pick up his phone, ask it about you, and find out exactly where you live?

That one worries me even less, actually. I’m sure some tragedies will occur, but ultimately, maybe it’ll just make people feel a little less safe about their “online anonymity,” which is a good thing in my book. Since there’s no such thing, really.

But I wonder about one specific: is this the kind of thing that could lead to the return of formalized dueling systems?

Stay tuned…

Post to Twitter Tweedle me deedles.

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  • Twitter’s going to add geolocation data to tweets

    It was my understanding that this was the original purpose of Twitter. You could tweet something like, "I'm at the MoMa" and your pinhead friends who happened to be there, too, could find you. Early adopters, who I knew, used this technology to facilitate such coincidental meetings, with other Tweeting friends, and with nearby like-minded Tweeters. There's nothing fundamentally creepy or dangerous about this. Every time you step outside, you risk attracting the attention of a stalker, and how often does that actually happen?
  • admin
    No, people do use it exactly that way "Hey, I'm here, where are y'all?" Which is one of the reasons, like I said, I'm not freaking out about the extension to adding location, and will likely turn the feature on, myself. And I can't wait until the Layar filter shows up for that.

    Maybe I wasn't clear or something, you seem to think I'm afraid of all this, and I'm not, just interested. Like I said, I think it might be a good thing for a lot of people if acting like a raging jackass online might have the same results as doing so IRL: people pounding on your door, wanting to beat you up.

    The hookup stuff just sounds cool to me: wish I were much younger and not settled, like I am. Hell, if the prostitution stuff I'm imagining comes around, or anything like it, maybe I'll look into mobile advertising for call girls or something. Or full-on on/offline social software/services, just for that purpose. Somebody's got to do it, and I've worked on plenty of porn sites and DVDs and whatnot.

    (Actually, typing that out, it occurs to me that this could go a long way toward eliminating the pimp role, further. Sort of the way that, as an unintended benefit, the already-started transition from iPhone to Android in China means nobody's going to Chinese prison for knocking off phones, anymore. Because you can't steal any Google product: they're all free.)
  • you seem to think I’m afraid of all this

    Oh, no, I don't think that, based on what I read. I was agreeing with you, and pointing out that such fear and paranoia are silly. Nevertheless, I, too, can hear the fear mongering news stories before they even air...
  • admin
    Oh, sorry - I thought I wasn't clear.

    The thing is that the fear is real - I mean, there really are shitty adult guys preying on young girls, primarily, online. Just like in real life. And this kind of advance in technology - it will open up new worlds of wonder and terror.

    Because that's how people are. It has nothing to do with the tech. It's why I don't don the tin foil hat about privacy issues with Google and etc. IRL, we all expect networks within networks, socially, to keep our secrets within secrets. If somebody tells, we are betrayed. It happens.

    Inevitably, cheating spouses are going to be caught b/c of their GPS tracking phones, and you know what? A few murders of passion will result. And some creepy guys are going to take advantage of new tech to stalk young girls. New categories of assault and libel and harassment may have to be created. So what?

    That's life.
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