Let’s Go Find Some Books to Burn

Yet another employee is facing joblessness based on her internet life. This time the heart of the scandal is a group of pictures hosted on the popular Flickr. Did I mention that they’re naked pictures and she’s a schoolteacher? And because of that little fact, this woman, Tamara Hoover, is facing the loss of her right to teach in the state of Texas. Prior to this case, there have been incidents where blogging (yes this very thing I’m doing now) has compromised employment where people aired grievances about their superiors. From cnn.com, “Hoover’s abrupt dismissal highlights a new concern for employees: Your boss has Internet access, too. ”

Let me repeat: YOUR BOSS HAS INTERNET ACCESS TOO. duh? This is not new. Are there really people out there who don’t take such facts into consideration before they post something online? Anything I post could be viewed by my grandmother, my friends, some dude in Scandanavia, and my employer. As I’ve mentioned before, the Internet creates a false sense of security and anonimity that creates an impulsivity that many people might not normally possess. Would you sit down in a room full of people, mostly strangers, with a photo album of topless pictures of yourself?

The internet is an avenue for sharing that outreaches standard accessibility. The Internet is the Planet Earth Part 2. Sometimes I think there will come a day when I can step through my flat screen monitor ala Alice and her looking glass and step into the Internet.

Let’s take the internet out of this for a moment and consider the case. If there was no Flickr, no internet, but there was still a Texas teacher named Tamara Hoover and there were still topless pictures of Ms. Hoover, would this be happening? Where would the photos be displayed and shared? Would the photos be in a gallery? Would they be accessible at all to the school district’s population? Would that garner the same disciplinary action? Because she’s a teacher she’s held to different standards. As a teacher you are a role model. I had a teacher in high school who liked to remind us that we leave our Bill of Rights at home when we show up to school. Since when is a school supposed to be devoid of culture? is school a moral sanctuary? And are topless photos amoral?

My opinion? We’ll see more stories like this where people have embraced the mini-cosmos called the Internet as more than a one dimensional “thing” and found themselves caught in a world that doesn’t yet know how to adapt. Keep your shirts on folks, this is going to be a long ride.

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