Wafaa Bilal is a man being driven slowly insane, and I think I may have had something to do with it.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story - which we've covered previously - Iraqi-American artist Wafaa Bilal has locked himself in a room for 30 days with a paintball gun, which can be aimed and fired from an Internet Web site, by anyone who wishes to do so. He's done this primarily to make a point about distance, technology, and humanity - the idea that we are sending real bombs into a "conflict zone" from the safety of a "comfort zone" and how that makes us more likely to inflict pain, suffering, and death.

But his original plan might have been more than he bargained for. The article I wrote made it on the social news Web site, Digg.com and A-list blog, BoingBoing, where it was elevated to the front page. Network Performance Daily got over fifty thousand unique visitors from that exposure - I have no idea how many then went on to Wafaa's site. From the machine-gun sounds on his most recent video diary, I suspect quite a few.

Wondering what this might look like from a network perspective? Here's a video of experimental NetQoS' network monitoring technology that gives you an approximation of what that Digg/Slashdot effect looks like.

(The data for this video is provided by NetQoS' network monitoring software.)

While we hope to have an interview dealing with the technical aspects of Wafaa's "Digging," - and they are considerable - up soon, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the human aspects. Wafaa has been putting up a video journal of the days inside the locked room as his time inside progresses. And on day 14, well - you can just see for yourself below what happened.

Wafaa is visibly shaken, and things have quickly become "insane." If Wafaa's intention was to create a microcosm of conditions in Iraq - a model, in effect, of what it is like to live in the combat zone, then what have I, and Network Performance Daily, become in this model? Certainly, Wafaa wanted attention for the project - and I don't doubt that's ultimately what he believes will do the most good - but through this exposure, I have to ask myself whether or not I'm acting in a manner consistent with journalistic ethics (Yes, this is a company blog, but we don't hide that, and I do take ethics very seriously). Ultimately, I must report the truth while seeking to minimize harm. Instead, through our promotion of the project, Wafaa Bilal was hurt physically and harmed emotionally - possibly endangering his mental health as well.

And in Wafaa's model of a war-torn country inside four walls, I've become part of the war. I've become the media hawks who overtly or tacitly call for the war, by promoting the site and giving people access to that virtual battlefield.

So yes, even I fit into this model that Wafaa has cooked up… and ultimately, the experiment is not occurring inside those four walls. Like Douglas Adams' penned fictional character "Wonko the Sane," Wafaa has locked himself "outside" of the real world where the insane people who cause people lasting pain for a few brief moments of pleasure. The experiment is truly not in the Chicago Art Institute, but everywhere but there. After all, it is not Wafaa who pulls the trigger on that gun. It is us, outside of the "asylum."

Later on, I hope to talk to Jason Potkanski, who helped set up much of the networking backend for Domestic Tension - but before I did so, I wanted to be able to get that off my chest.