Hi All, I've been on the phone with reporters on and off today and am struggling a bit with the whole event. Mostly, the questions are about the "impacts" of various technologies, to which I respond that the technology with the most impact yesterday was a gun. But I just had a long back and forth with a reporter from the National Post who was saying "the guy had this website, why didn't anybody do anything?" I tried to explain the subtleties of goth subculture, darkness and all that to no avail. The old "most of the people on this website never do anything" argument wasn't washing either. My line was that the responsible people for doing something were the people close to the shooter, whether they be online or offline friends. The reporter then turned it back on me and asked whether that wasn't simply dismissing online communication as a serious context. Sooooo, I'm turning the question around to you: at what point do people have a responsibility to "intervene" in something they see online and if that point comes, what form should their reaction take? I write this noting that there was just a big report (I think I saw this in the paper a day or two ago) by the Canadian anti-defamation league about the proliferation of hate websites and governments being unable to regulate them. Best, --J -- Jonathan Sterne Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University http://sterneworks.org