Twitter Culture and Humanity: After Fort Hood

For those who missed it, Paul Carr had a provocative piece at TechCrunch a few days ago discussing the actions of a Twitter user present at the shooting at Fort Hood:

In the actions of Tearah Moore at Fort Hood, we have the perfect example of both kinds of selfishness.

There surely can’t be a human being left in the civilised world who doesn’t know that cellphones must be switched off in hospitals, and yet not only did Moore leave hers on but she actually used it to photograph patients, and broadcast the images to the world. Just think about that for a second. Rather than offering to help the wounded, or getting the hell out of the way of those trying to do their jobs, Moore actually pointed a cell-phone at a wounded soldier, uploaded it to twitpic and added a caption saying that the victim “got shot in the balls”.

Read the article and, don't miss the amazing video from This American Life.

Technologies of communication always change us, because we exist in, through, and because of communication. So we'd best be careful of what we are slouching toward.