Today I will be looking at two different articles “Village Phone” and “Love Online”

Summaries of both articles:

It Takes A Village To Find A Phone is an interesting story about how people can come together and overcome obstacles in life. A woman named Ivanna lost her phone in a cab and must deal with a thief who will not return it. So, Ivanna gets help from her friend Evan who is a programmer. With his knowledge, they create a page called StolenSideKick. As word spread about this, newspaper The Digg made it a front-page story. This only helped to fuel a community of like-minded individuals who could relate to Ivanna and wanted to help in any way possible. The page gained some much attention it kept on crashing so it had to be moved to a new site that could handle its high traffic. From all the effort put forth towards getting Ivanna’s phone back, the thief was arrested and the phone was returned. Ivanna also dropped the charges after her phone was returned.

In this article, it brings up the idea of right and wrong. Publicly shaming someone and having the thief’s identity being spread worldwide on a global platform. Privacy almost doesn’t exist anymore. Also how a large group like-minded individuals can come together to accomplish a task as receiving stolen property. Nothing like that has happened before and it probably won’t again which makes this a very unique case.

• The article Love Online by Henry Jenkins is an interesting piece about his son meeting someone online. His son didn’t connect with anyone at his school so he extends his reach by going online. He meets Sarah in an online discussion group. They would chat online and over the phone. Sending virtual gifts to each other. Sarah’s father was not too thrilled with this virtual interaction. He would only allow them to continue if he personally met Henry. Henry asks permission to see her before making the trip, and her father agrees. Henry and Sarah first met at an airport. They both connect with each other over video games and WWE. After the trip, they break up since the situation did not meet their expectations.

Despite online relationships being a new way of life. It is not far off from what has happened before. Long distance relationships have been going on for a long time. In World War 2 sending love letters back and forth was very common. Then also online communication with one and other allows the user to think before they post. While in person they are just living in the moment.