“Village Phone” Summary

The story about the “Village Phone” was an interesting one indeed, finding a way to encapsulate humanity, technology, morals, goverment relations all in one. This story begins in a cab in New York City and goes much further beyond. Ivanna is someone who is soon to be married and has unfortunately lost her phone traveling in a cab, and was lost on how to get it returned to her. In a time where smartphones weren’t a thing yet, Ivanna owned a phone that was highly sought after called a Sidekick. This phone also contained much needed information for Ivanna’s wedding and more. Ivanna searched out help from tech-savvy friend Evan, who kicked the story into high gear. Evan started to use the Internet to his advtanage, posting the story of lost phone. After retriving photos of the “new onwer” of the phone, a 16 year old in Corona, New York named Sasha, Evan now had the fuel he needed to lead a full scale mission to retrieve the phone for his friend. Evan eventually got informtation on not only Sasha, but her family, boyfriend, and her home life via blog posts and internet bulletin boards. The forums were getting so much traffic that they were instantly crashing. NYPD was now involved, and was pressured by the internet to change Ivanna’s complaint from lost to stolen. With her information now public and the story gaining traction, NYPD was able to quickly arrest and retrieve the stolen phone from Sasha, who had been very billigerent throughout the whole ordeal. In the end, Ivannas wedding went on without any further hitches, and Evan was offered many jobs in PR following the now national story and history was made. A great lesson was to be learned from this situation; the power of the internet, morality, humanity… When humans feel compelled to come together, the tools we have at our disposal mixed with our disposition and thirst for justice, things that seem impossible become very doable.