hal tweets ·7:42 AM
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
Smartphone
2009,
11:24 GMT
Naked Wizard Tasered: The Case Against Peep TV
Posted by: Hal
You can debate the actions of the police in this video all you want. But what I want you to think about are two things:
1) 250,000 have watched this video on Vimeo in 3 days. Yesterday Huffington Post put it up. Now its on Digg, on LiveNews Australia, and who knows how many blogs (like this one). By the end of the day today, I’m sure more than 1 million people will have watched this video.
2) Keep an eye on the crowd in this video. They are the real story here. They stand around in a semi-circle a respectful distance from the action pointing their camera phones. As the situation escalates, the number of cameras recording the action increases. Is this citizen journalism, an activist public intent on monitoring the scene? Or is this prurient Peep recording – chronicling another person’s confusion and misery because they know other people will find it entertaining?
Two questions:
*If the police had pulled out their night-sticks and started savagely beating this man, would anyone in this crowd of mesmerized photographers have intervened?
*Why will millions of people watch this six minute clip? (Here’s a clue: a very enthusiastic Huffington Post introduced the video this way: Herewith, the best Tasering video since ‘Don’t Tase me bro!’)
Naked Wizard Tased By Reality from Tracy Anderson on Vimeo.
2009,
19:52 GMT
Peep Doc - Fact Versus Fiction in the Basement
Posted by: Hal
So the Peep documentary is starting to get into full swing. And things are starting to get…uh…interesting. Right now, the doc people are redoing my basement so I can move my office down there. My actual office on the second floor is too small to film in. Also they want something sleeker, more modern looking. So I’m going to have an entire wall blackboard and a glass desk that glows.
Of course we all know that in documentaries reality is manufactured, but it’s interesting to be part of it, and have an opportunity to chronicle the journey.
Another interesting fake-real thing: Sally Blake, one of the producers, has been worried about the chronology. You see, in the doc, we’re apparently going to pretend that I’m just now starting to explore peep culture. So she keeps trying to find things that I haven’t done yet. Sally: Do you have a webcam? Me: yes. Sally: Ah…too bad. They’re very excited that I don’t have a smart phone yet, key component of Peep (haven’t needed one because I never leave the house) so one of the first things they’ll be filming is me getting a smart phone next week.
It sucks when the truth gets in the way of the story. So we are going to massage the truth where necessary. Does it matter? Does it mean the the documentary will be ‘fake’?
Time will tell.
2009,
14:04 GMT
Doc Update: Hal gets phone and other adventures
Posted by: Hal
So the second official day of shooting for the documentary happened a few days back. Here’s what we did:
Filmed me (pretending) to take out the trash. Filmed me watering the garden, stirring my compost bin (nice assortment of worms and grubs in there…). Filmed me (pretending) to watch tv on the couch.
The idea was to establish my relative normalcy, my basic reticence, the general sense that I am not someone who generally makes a big spectacle spewing my emotions and private moments all over the place. This is true and I tried not to ham it up, and just be natural, though Director Sally kept accusing me of mugging for the camera so I’m not sure how successful I was. The culmination of this was a 40 minute on camera interview where Sally lobbed questions at me, asking to defend the project, and commented on the fact that many people she’d talked to about me referred to my abruptness and incivility. (Your point Sally?)
The day went quickly and suddenly it was 4 o’clock and we were in a time crunch to get things done – the crew had a bunch of interviews scheduled with my brother and some of my friends (again to establish my baseline normalcy and lack thereof). Frantic rescheduling on everyone’s part and we were off to the food court shopping area downtown underneath the TD Center.
At the Wireless Wave store next to the Laura Secord, we filmed a scene where I pretended to enquire about a cell phone. I was just pretending because the cell had already been picked out and activated by producer Jeanette. The Wireless Wave guy was a bit nervous but got into it after the first take. He showed me the features and advised me against doing things like Twitter and signing up for Google Latitude. Yeah right! I’m pretty sure Sally liked that part. The core of the scene was true: it is my first ever cell phone and I’m not particularly excited about having it and I have only a slight notion of how to work it so far.
On the way out the camera and sound guys harassed the girl closing down the Laura Secord into giving them free cones of maple walnut ice cream.
Next scene, a park in the Annex where I fiddled with my phone. I couldn’t actually figure out how to send a Twitter so I ended up pretending to send a Twitter at Sally’s instruction. The fake Twitter claimed to say “I am in the park.” Watching this was a group of 12 year-olds on skate-boards. Kids: “Are you filming a commercial?” Sally: “No a documentary” Kids: “What about?” Sally: “It’s about, uh, cell phones and stuff.” Kids: “Oh.” They promptly departed.
Somehow all this activity took us to 8:30 at night. I hurried home to find W trying to put E. to bed. We all lay down in E’s bed together and fell asleep.
2009,
16:36 GMT
Google Latitude Experiment
Posted by: Hal
So as of today, I am providing my approximate location to anyone who cares to know it. I am doing this by using a google service called Latitude. To see my location, go to the main page of peep and look at the map.
I’m curious about this, I don’t know how people will use it. Will anyone drop in on me randomly in the course of my wonderings? I have a lot of travel coming up in the next two months so it might be fun for people to see where I am at any given moment.
Anyway, if you see I’m near you and have the urge, definitely come on by!
And if you’re staying at home watching me going about my business, let me know, because that’s interesting too.
I first learned about this service when me and the doc crew were out in San Francisco at Google headquarters. I’ve been eager to try it ever since, but had to hold off as we were working on other aspects of Peep. So now’s my chance!
2009,
23:48 GMT
Teens Film Assaults and Hal Talks Peep: all in the Same City!
Posted by: Hal
So I went to the Edmonton Journal to read the an article about peep culture, but a different story caught my eye first. Trio of teens film assaults, reads the headline.
I checked out the article and discovered that three teenagers assaulted two different random women at the West Edmonton Mall on the same night. The teens, two girls and guy, thought it would be fun to have one of them beat on somebody while the other two filmed the attack on a cell phone and encouraged whoever was doing the beating.
The police have arrested the teens and recovered the cell phone. One of the investigators said this: “It’s bizarre. It was just a really strange thing. It was a first for me as an investigator to come across someone actually filming a very vicious assault and a robbery within an hour of each other. We actually recovered the phone and the filming of the incident is really going against them. It’s like the final nail in the coffin.”
Wow. Welcome to Peep culture. I finally made it to the article about peep wondering if anyone else would read these two stories and make the connection. We’ll see. Here’s the opening of the interview:
The interview with Hal Niedzviecki is off to a limping start.
The Canadian culture critic answers the phone in a distracted sort of way, with the sound of click-clicking in the background.
I know that sound. It’s the sound of attention in split screen: Phone conversation one side, Internet conversation on the other.
Me: “Are you addicted to the Internet, Hal?”
Niedzviecki: “No. Maybe. Yes.”
Nice. Read the rest of this interview in the Edmonton Journal.
The Bloggist
Hey, I’m Hal Niedzviecki. I’m a writer/thinker who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my wife and daughter. Up till now I’ve always considered myself a private person. But at the same time I’m fascinated by people who effortlessly open themselves up to the whole world. So I’ve… more...
A short piece I wrote for AOLnews about why Peep culture trumps privacy online. http://bit.ly/bQECsC
New content on the Broken Pencil website! Short fiction: Shack the Clam Girl + How to Make Your Own Game Cabinet http://bit.ly/b6CHLP
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