Episode Summary
The darker side of human nature rears its head in the digital realm more than we'd care to admit. While the promise of the open Internet brings with it wonderful opportunities for community and communication, it also has a host of problems, whether it's called cyber bullying, harassment, or trolling. In this episode of The Digital Life, we examine the story of Kathy Sierra, a UX luminary, who for the second time has pulled back from her online life, due to horrific harassment, and her blog post explaining her side of the matter. You can also read her post at Wired online.
If you're interested in conversation at the intersection of technology, UX, design, and human behavior, you've come to the right place. You can view the full show transcript as well as previous episodes on The Digital Life Web site.
Here are a few quotes from this week's discussion.
Jon on online harassment:
I think what the blog post reveals, at least to me, is that there are aspects to our online digital life which are just as miserable as our physical lives. The difference being that there actually is it seems to be a little more transparency on the digital side. If all of these had happened to offline to her, there probably would be much less visibility into it and the level that we know of all these things is directly attributable to the fact that it’s online. At the same time, it probably also amplified it, because this harassment happens online. And so people who otherwise would never hear about it can join in for good or ill. And in her case, it seems like there has been an awful number of people who joined in for ill.
Dirk on the need to protect people online:
There’s a reason why humanity has evolved so that there’s local police in one form or another, and essentially, every civilized society. It’s because people, all of us have some badness in us but there are some people who really do a whole lot of bad. That needs to be protected against and combated. It might be naïve of us to think that the kind of individuals who tormented Kathy and her family aren’t out there. I mean they certainly are out there and maybe what we need to be thinking about and talking about is what is our equivalent response to a national military or to a local police?
