Evan Ratliff
Evan Ratliff is a contributor to Wired Magazine and one of the coauthors of Safe: the race to protect ourselves in a newly dangerous world.[1] His article The Zombie Hunters: On the trail of cyberextortionists, written for The New Yorker in 2005,[2] was featured in The best of technology writing 2006.[3]
[edit] Experiment
He conducted an experiment by vanishing as far as knowledge of his physical whereabouts.[4] Wired offered a $5000 reward for anyone who could find him.[5] During the experiment, he was still "on the grid" and communicating with his followers on Twitter.[6] The Google Wave development group has proposed using the phenomenal ploy as a test case for the new technology pushing the frontier of real-time web activity.[7] NewsCloud set up its Facebook application community technology [8] to report on the story and enhance community behind the #vanish hash tag. Ratliff used his specially created blog to taunt the "hunters",[9] and Facebook groups emerged to team up and find him [10] and others groups formed to help him remain at large [11] He was tracked to and found on September 8, 2009 in New Orleans by @vanishteam, a group participating in the challenge to find him.[12]
[edit] Clues
Ratliff left a coded message [13] FaLiLV/tRD:aN/HA:aSaTS; TW—tRS/tEKAA/tBotV; FSF—TItN/tGG/tCCoBB; JC—LJ/HoD/aOoP; JM—JGS/MWS/tBotH; which has been translated to the authors and titles of books.
Wired also released a playlist of songs from Evan which can be listened to and downloaded.
The @runningratliff may also be Evan posting and includes the DVD Pursuit, a 1972 Michael Crichton film featuring Martin Sheen - set in San Diego. @runningratliff also mentions SDIA (thought to be San Diego International Airport). See Is Evan in San Diego?
[edit] References
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Wikiversity has learning materials about Evan Ratliff |
- ^ Martha Baer; Katrina Heron; Oliver Morton; Evan Ratliff (2005), Safe: the race to protect ourselves in a newly dangerous world, HarperCollins, ISBN 9780060577155, http://books.google.com/?id=YlvvzkXSXiAC
- ^ http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010fa_fact
- ^ Brendan I. Koerner, ed. (2006), The best of technology writing 2006, University of Michigan Press, p. 264, ISBN 9780472031955, http://books.google.com/?id=HWlhWVD4gdYC&pg=PA264&dq=evan-ratliff
- ^ Wired.com/vanish
- ^ Catch This Writer If You Can and Win $5k ABC News, Aug. 26, 2009
- ^ @theativist (Evan Ratliff's Twitter account)
- ^ Google Wave API group post
- ^ VanishTeam
- ^ EvanOffGrid Blog
- ^ The Search for Evan Ratliff
- ^ Run, Evan, Run!
- ^ Thompson, Nicholas (September 8, 2009). "Evan Ratliff Is Caught!". Wired. http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/09/evan-ratliff-is-caught/.
- ^ @evansvanished
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