Beating The Bounds railwalk project shut down

Last week, I posted about grad student Naomi Adiv's "Beating The Bounds" thesis project, where she was documenting her walks of the Amtrak Capital Corridor between the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento. Apparently, someone from railroad owners Union Pacific read the post and forwarded it to the security office who, citing safety concerns, told Naomi to stop the project. Naomi recounts the telephone conversation with the Union Pacific security representative on her blog. My favorite part was the end of the call:

(The security officer said,) "Can I ask you a question?" Why would you do this?" I told him I was curious.

I felt badly that my post had seemingly led to the immediate end of Naomi's project. Turns out, she says that being forced to stop walking is just more grist for the research mill. From an email she sent me:

 Photos Uncategorized 2008 01 22 Img 0785The rail project was shut down just two days after it was posted on boingboing, and I think this brings up some interesting questions about research and publishing on the internet. The first, and most obvious, is that this project was going on for months before anyone at Union Pacific (UP) ever found out about it. Furthermore, I saw and talked to a bunch of UP maintenance people while I was out walking and they didn't stop me. This isn't to incriminate them or say that they are doing a bad job, but that people are out there all the time, and the fundamental difference here is that I am publishing my findings. The second is an ethical concern: I have now attracted a lot of attention to this space that I find so special precisely because it is marginal. Does this endanger its marginal quality? Perhaps. I certainly don't want anyone who is living by the tracks to be pushed out of their already marginal spot because of my research. But is there any qualitative difference to posting it on my own blog and linking it to a much bigger one? Finally, I got some of my best feedback from people who found the work on boingboing, people who didn't know me or just like the project because they are my friends. I see a lot of potential in this for future research. Academics might balk at this – what we do is not about everyone putting their two cents in – but I have been really pushed by some of the questions and comments sent to me in ways I would not have been otherwise.

Link

Previously on BB:
• Naomi Adiv's Beating The Bounds project Link