The State We're In, 5 March 2011. Who are we? One American writer knew exactly who she was, but didn’t know who was using her name and her image to promote a porn site that thousands were flocking to. A single mother-of-four in South Africa discovers photography to recreate herself. And a philosopher-theologian speculates that robots maybe do have souls. Photo: Thulbelitsha by Lindeka Qambi.
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Facebook fraud
It took a while for friends to convince her, but writer Susan Arnout Smith eventually decided to join Facebook. She enjoyed reconnecting with people until she learned about another Facebook page bearing her name and photo on it: a pornographic site. She tells host Jonathan Groubert about her odyssey to track down the culprits and uncover their identities. Susan is the author of the thrillers The Timer Game and Out at Night. Link - Susan Arnout Smith's website.
Robots with soul
Anne Foerst is a philosopher-theologian with a passionate interest in artificial intelligence (and she had a particular soft spot for one robot: Kismet, from MIT’s artificial intelligence lab). She tells Jonathan why she thinks robots may in fact have souls, and why it matters in the way we treat each other.
Sangomas by Lindeka Qambi
Lindeka Qambi is a single mother-of-four from a township in South Africa. Life was kind of bleak until she discovered photography and reinvented herself as a photographer. Her life-changing moment came when she took part in a project called Iliso Labantu, or Eye of the People.
The man behind Eye of the People
Alistair Berg is originally from England, and after moving to South Africa wasn’t happy with the lack of understanding or contact that white people have with township life. So he did something about it: he helped teach people like Lindeka how to use a camera and maybe – just maybe – change the way they, and others, look at themselves.
See below for more photographs from the project. Link - visit the Iliso Labantu website here.
Would the real Jonathan Groubert...?
Show host Jonathan Groubert was just starting out as a broadcaster at Radio Netherlands Worldwide, when he learned that a radio presenter in Montreal was using his name. Now, all these years later, Jonathan tracks him down to ask an amused "why?"
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Considering the level popular "culture" sinks to on the internet, she escaped relatively unharmed. As a father of three I assure you not wanting to out these young adults was the wrong way to go. The internet already provides a cover for these crimes, she should not have further protected these "children".
Children do not defame and insult their elders, morons do.
Susan Arnout Smith's story doesn't really add up.
I can understand how it would be distressing anyone to see their name and photo on a fake page. Probably especially so for an older person, not familiar with the internet, to see their name and photo on a fake page. But then how does she suddenly develop the skills to determine, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the original creators of the page? She has a SEO agent but he can't help her either?
The idea that Facebook is callous and ignores her calls probably plays well with the technophobe older audience, but other people don't seem to have that problem. She says the school principal got the page taken down within a day just by asking.
My guess is something vaguely like this did happen to her or a friend, but she's exaggerating the emotional impact, exaggerating the difficulty of getting it taken down, and exaggerating her success in identifying the perpetrators, for the sake of getting her name in the news.
I'm disappointed in RNW being so credulous and naive.
You missed the story and the point, Skeptic. Nobody of any generation would like to see their name and image on a pornographic site. She's hardly technophobic as she has blogs and sites, as was mentioned at least twice. Susan didn't "suddenly" gain the skills to track down the perpetrators. It took months, as the piece indicated. And she was battling her own desire to keep the matter below the radar; the only way to get a solution was to put it on the radar. Your guess that she was exaggerating her account on a few levels is both baseless and unwarranted: her story's real. And at least she attaches her name to the claims she's made publicly. You haven't.
Actually, the question I had throughout this show was why did Susan A. Smith assume that the profile the kids had made on Facebook was meant to impersonate HER? There are lots of people in the world that share the same name(s) you know. Why did her friend assume "that other FB page" was hers? I think that says a lot about her friend.
Mack: she didn't do any assuming. Her name and image were on the pornographic FB site. Greg Kelly, Editor TSWI
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