Is more information making us better informed? We all like to to think so. But some people are worried about Net Neutrality and Balkanisation. Yes, our old friend, the echo-chamber again: "Thanks to Wikipedia, you can choose between five definitions of Neutrality," complains one telecoms lawyer.
Even the act of dying becomes a much more public event in the on-line age. (Much as it was in Victorian times, perhaps?) I only met Cathy Seipp once, very briefly, at the time of the Pajamas Media launch back in 2005. We were in the same coffee shop on Lexington Avenue, a few doors away from our hotel. I went up to her table to say hello, but didn't linger because she looked as if she needed a little peace and quiet. As you probably know, Cathy succumbed to cancer last month. Her friend, Sandra Tsing Loh has been tracking the tsunami-like Web response:
Another frenzied wave of posts and hits and "Cathy Seipp" began climbing the Technorati search ratings, past Paris Hilton, MySpace, YouTube and "American Idol." She eventually reached No. 1... Even her grieving friends were forced to admit that she would have loved that.
Into this heartfelt swaying and singing of "We Are Cathy's World" entered the cyber-squatter. This is the disgruntled blogger who years ago bought the domain name cathyseipp.com; as a result, Cathy blogged from cathyseipp.net. What he did on cathyseipp.com varied — first he posted as Cathy, and then he merely posted disparaging comments about Cathy, Photoshopping her and her daughter's heads atop various bodies...[W]hen the cyber-squatter last week reverted to his earlier ways, posting a "last blog entry" signed "Cathy Seipp" in which Cathy supposedly begged final forgiveness for her politics, her friends and her parenting … this seemed to cross a new line.
By week's end, Cathy's family and friends were debating whether to take legal action. Everyone was offended, exhausted and still staggered with grief. The public expression of which — Cathy's funeral — was, of course, recorded without our knowledge and posted by another blogger. Yep, it's all out there on the Web, just start Googling — you'll see snot pouring out of my nose as I wail helplessly through my eulogy, which, along with everything else involving the ceremony, has all already been critiqued online...
And yet, I suppose the whole carnival is fitting. In the high-water days of Old Media, a writer's passing involved a duly-agreed-upon period of reverence, reticence and literary self-restraint. Our grief over a lost talent would dictate a certain vague lionization, and a certain dullness. Not so in this brave new Cathy's World of New Media...
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