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cf:
SenseCam:
http://research.microsoft.com/sendev/projects/sensecam/?0sr=a
Articles about the MyLifeBits Project and Gordon Bell:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3084
http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/bio.htm
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;363346268;pp;1
Annotation
Gordon Bell has a distinguished career in the IT industry. He's also decided to catalogue his life. This brings up interesting questions as to why keep all this stuff? Is there some purpose to being able to forget some or most of it?
Bell is refining his technique to store everything about himself on one terrabyte of data. He wants to get it all on his Dell laptop. He started out motivated by Bill Gates' book and decided to scan all the paper he owned. Co-conspirator Jim Gray helped him set-up a database for searching and archival purposes, but when Jim went sailing and never came back, Bell's quest became personal. Now he captures all web sites he goes to, he wears a sensecam to capture photos whenever light or heat changes (or in timed intervals). He works for Microsoft's research arm and can leverage Microsoft's power to create technology that allows data to be easily retrievable and identifable. He doesn't see it as lifelogging because he doesn't want the information public. One article likens it to "immortality" but rather, it's more like a huge digital scrapbook or time capsule. His laptop is so valuable to him now as a repository of memories, that he doesn't carry it around with him anymore.
Through the lens of forgetting, one should ask if keeping all this data is useful. The technology is more for identifying and retrieving information more than collecting the information. Collection is still a time-consuming and cumbersome process. On top of that, for the information to be retrievable, he has to annotate all of his data. How much of the data will anyone actually access in the future? What are the benefits of the system. Who benefits from the data? He says he doesn't have a problem with persistence -- all of the data should exist in perpitude, but is this a realistic recollection of him as a person?
Annotation (all three facebook annotations are the same)
These three articles address the issue that one cannot be fully deleted from facebook. Instead your account is deactivated. The data persists on facebook's servers "in case you wish to reactivate your account". Users were concerned about persistence, i.e., forgetting, but of course, the articles and facebook frame the issue as a question of privacy. Facebook has since incorporated the ability to delete, but the option is still difficult to find and implement. Facebook has also integrated several other privacy features, but I would argue that the issue (again) is that of data persistence rather than data exposure.
Citation
Aspan, Maria. 2008. Quitting Facebook Gets Easier. The New York Times, February 13 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/technology/13face.html?sq=facebook%20profile%20delete&st=nyt&scp=2&pagewanted=print (Accessed March 1, 2008).
Annotation (all 3 articles have the same annotation)
These three articles address the issue that one cannot be fully deleted from facebook. Instead your account is deactivated. The data persists on facebook's servers "in case you wish to reactivate your account". Users were concerned about persistence, i.e., forgetting, but of course, the articles and facebook frame the issue as a question of privacy. Facebook has since incorporated the ability to delete, but the option is still difficult to find and implement. Facebook has also integrated several other privacy features, but I would argue that the issue (again) is that of data persistence rather than data exposure.
Citation
Aspan, Maria. 2008. How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free. The New York Times, February 11 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/technology/11facebook.html?_r=1&sq=facebook%20profile%20delete&st=nyt&oref=slogin&scp=3&pagewanted=print (Accessed March 1, 2008).
Annotation
Blanchette & Johnson broadly call for reframing data retention from an issue of privacy and surveillance to one of persistence and forgetfulness. First they provide background on the current state of privacy and suggest that our constant surveillance is leading to a panoptic society. They call for a reaffirmation of the social values of forgetting. They use examples from U.S. law to demonstrate how forgetfulness can and is already incorporated into policy for the betterment of society, but warn that these policies are already buckling and old limits are fading under the increasing capability of technology to remember.
Specifically they draw on three policies: credit reports, bankruptcy law, and juvenile crime records. Each have limits on the time in which data is held. Such forgetting allows individuals a fresh start. They note that social forgetting/forgiving is not enough to affect policy change. In the case of bankruptcy law, the creditors and government benefit in the process (the law captures all debts in a central repository allowing for collective action and fair distribution; government needs to look responsive to helping individuals get back into economic business).
Citation
Blanchette, Jean-François, and Deborah G. Johnson. 2002. Data Retention and the Panoptic Society: The Social Benefits of Forgetfulness. Information Society 18, no. 1:33-45.
Annotation (all facebook artilces have the same annotation)
These three articles address the issue that one cannot be fully deleted from facebook. Instead your account is deactivated. The data persists on facebook's servers "in case you wish to reactivate your account". Users were concerned about persistence, i.e., forgetting, but of course, the articles and facebook frame the issue as a question of privacy. Facebook has since incorporated the ability to delete, but the option is still difficult to find and implement. Facebook has also integrated several other privacy features, but I would argue that the issue (again) is that of data persistence rather than data exposure.
Citation
Aspan, Maria. 2008. After Stumbling, Facebook Finds a Working Eraser. The New York Times, February 18 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/business/18facebook.html?sq=facebook%20profile%20delete&st=nyt&scp=1&pagewanted=print (Accessed March 1, 2008).
Annotation
Dodge & Kitchin explore pervasive computing in regards to surveillance and increasingly sousveillance (capturing data about yourself). They look at the development of life-logs, sociospatial archives that document every action, every event, every conversation, and every material expression of an individual's life and the potential social, political, and ethical implications of machines that never forget. They suggest that given the new possible paradigm, forgetting needs to be incorporated into new technologies. They look to Schacter's modes of forgetting as a basis for creating an ethics of forgetting. They go over the main types of forgetting in Schacter and call for implementing Schacter's models in technological design to create a humane but still useful system. They also champion the idea of incorporating forgetting into architecture (as a kernel) instead of legislating forgetting as a blanket.
Citation
Dodge, Martin, and Rob Kitchin. 2005. 'Outlines of a world coming into existence': pervasive computing and the ethics of forgetting. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 34, no. 3:431 - 445.
“Early Experiments in Cloud Computing”
by Gale Gruman
InforWorld.com
April 7, 2008
What do the New York Times and the Nasdaq have in common? Both companies have made a critical and substantial leap into the world of cloud computing through Amazon.com. Amazon offers its cloud computing infrastructure to third parties for “internet-provisioned computing and storage services.” [pg. 3] Amazon’s two products are called Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3).
The New York Times used S3 in order to convert 11 million articles published between 1851 (the year the newspaper was founded) and 1989 from TIFF to PDF files. The reason the newspaper converted the files was so that they could shrink them in size and then make them accessible through the nytimes.com website search engine. What actually happen Ned? The New York Times cut up old newspapers into columns to fit into the scanners in TIFF format and then uploaded the files to S3. In total, the TIFF data took up 4TB worth of storage space (1TB = 1,000 GB). Then, the New York Times used EC2 to convert the 4 TB of raw data (the articles as they scanned them) into PDF files reducing the total size of the data to roughly 1.5 TB. The greatest part of the story is that, “[t]he Times didn’t coordinate the job with Amazon – someone in IT just signed up for the service on the web using a credit card, then began uploading the data.” [pg. 4] The New York Times IT staff completed the job in roughly 24 hours using 100 Linux computers.
Nasdaq sought to make extra revenue by selling historic data regarding stocks and investment funds. Nasdaq turned to Amazon to host the data using S3 and also had Amazon design a special reader application using Adobe AIR technology in order for customers to be able to view the data purchased.
“The traditional approach wouldn’t have gotten off the ground economically…[t]he expenses of keeping all that data online was too high. So Nasdaq took its market data and created flat files for every entity, each holding enough data for a 10-minute replay of the stock’s or fund’s price changes, on a second-by-second basis. (It adds 100,000 files per day to the several million it started with.) The Adobe AIR app Courbois’ (the VP for Data Products at Nasdaq) team put together in just a couple of days pulls in the flat files stored at Amazon.com and then creates the replay animations from them." [pg. 4]
Several issues arise in this story that are pertinent to further discussion regarding policy matters and cloud computing. As is the case in many other situations, there is a concern about privacy. For both Nasdaq and the New York Times there should also be concerns regarding the safety and availability of their data. If either of these companies wants access to its information, they are at the mercy of Amazon, instead of controlling their own data by purchasing and maintaining its own additional servers to do the job. Of course, both companies measured this risk and it is evident that in both cases, they determined that the cost (or the risk of holding their data remotely in these instances) was outweighed by the benefits (saving lots of money on hard ware as well as labor to maintain the hard wear to house the data).
“Computing In The Clouds”
by Aaron Weiss
The Guide to Computing Literature, Networker Magazine
December 2007
In 1943, IBM Chairman Thomas Watson said, “I think there’s a world market for maybe five computer.” [pg. 18] The personal computing industry that began in the 1970’s and current popularity of cloud computing prove that Watson’s statement could not have been more wrong. Weiss defines cloud computing generally as the ability to distribute computer processes over a large number of small computers/servers in order to maximize the efficient use of resources. The idea being if one were to do an internet search through Google, for example, that Google could distribute the work of doing the actual search over a large number of computers rather than one large (and powerful) computer doing the search and returning the results to the user. The relevant question, in this case, is how does Google most efficiently distribute the task of fulfilling the search to many individual computers/servers in order to decrease the time it takes to conduct the search and then return the results to the user.
The article also provides working definitions of SaaS and utility computing in order to understand how they relate or should be considered as part of the larger cloud computing phenomenon. The most important and influential SaaS established to date is the creation of web-based email. While many individuals, organizations and companies do not entirely depend on web-based email service, the trend is quickly moving in that direction. Weiss refers to SaaS, as in the case of web-based email, as merely a revival of an older concept known as “thin client” computing. In the realm of cloud computing, the most relevant concern that emerges is privacy because operating in the cloud and allowing a third party to store and/or process your digital information requires a high level of trust.
This article is relevant because it sheds light on the fact that cloud computing is a popular, “buzzword almost designed to be vague[.]” [pg. 25] One reaction to this piece is to feel that it is not possible to provide a complete definition for the terminology ‘cloud computing.’ Nevertheless, a more appropriate conclusion might be to think of cloud computing as a trend that “draws on many existing technologies and architectures.” [pg. 25]
Annotation
Forgetting is easier to do than remembering. Empirically cultures have tried to preserve memory through devices like books, film, record, etc. However, conservation has always been expensive, thus strict limits are applied as to what to keep. New digital memory is relatively inexpensive and it allows us to store everything, regardless of significance. Also, digital data is easily reproduced and accessed bringing up issues of privacy. Because of this, Mayer-Schonberger sees a shift from discarding to preserving. Is this a good thing? No.
Three conventional responses:
- Comprehensive privacy litigation is difficult because lobby groups exert a lot of power but represent only a few, while the masses who would benefit are diffuse and disorganized;
- constitutional reinterpretation while potentially valid under the First, Fourth, and implicit "privacy" amendments (first, third, fourth, fifth, ninth, and fourteenth) is difficult to pass and would not regulate private parties only public government;
- Null response or inaction can be argued as the best approach if there is no demand for legal action, however, the null response argument is naive when considering political theory's acknowledgment of the difficulty the majority has in transforming its will into law.
Lawrence Lessig proposes a solution that is a combination of law and code, but Mayer-Schonberger finds solution too complex for this focused issue of data retention. Instead, Mayer-Schonberger proposes a simple solution of reinstating forgetting over time through
- user-defined storage timelines,
- decreasing cookie life,
- requiring companies to delete/forget data, including cell phone software, and
- limiting sensor data.
Mayer-Schonberger briefly covers the strengths and weaknesses of his plan and summarizes article in the conclusion.
Source citation
Mayer-Schoenberger, Viktor. "Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing." Working Paper RWP07-022, Cambridge, Mass.: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2007 Apr.
danah boyd is a doctoral candidate in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley and a Fellow at the Harvard University Law School Berkman Center for Internet and Society. apophenia is her blog.
In this post, she relates a story from a friend of hers, who centralized virtually all of his online life (and therefore, his life) on Google products, only to have his account erased by Google because of a fraudulent phishing attack. The story raises concerns about storing all your data in one place and with one company.
Mozilla is currently testing out something called "Weave," a tool that would allow you to synchronize your content on multiple browsers, via a hosting option similar to what Google does.
This goes a step beyond Google, because Mozilla is, of course, a desktop application. So Mozilla Weave would have access to your desktop behavior and the stuff you store on their servers.
BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, September 29th 2007, 4:00 AM
A federal judge yesterday refused to stop the city from requiring all yellow cabs to be equipped with Global Positioning Systems and credit card machines.
Citing privacy concerns, a taxi drivers union had filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary order delaying the new city rules.
But U.S. District Judge Richard Berman ruled yesterday that the use of the technology to improve taxi service appeared to outweigh drivers' privacy rights.
Upset? You should be!
Let's stand up to silent tracking and government bullying and send a strong message to printer manufacturers. Our privacy and our control over our own technology is far too important to give up over trumped up fears of photocopied money.
Here's what you can do:
* Get informed about the issue!
* Spread the word. Tell your friends and coworkers.
* Follow our instructions and call up your printer maker. Ask them to stop using tracking codes and demand that they tell you how to turn it off. The Secret Service can't come and question all of us!
* Support groups like the EFF working to expose and oppose printer tracking dots.
by Sol Hess
June, 2007
In a matter of months, New Yorkers riding in taxicabs will have more to look at than the view. The constant media buzz of modern life - television programs, sports scores, advertisements - will invade the back of cabs starting in October, the result of a new city regulation requiring that all yellow cabs be equipped with global positioning systems and video screens.
The city Taxi and Limousine Commission says it simply wants to make cab rides safer and more enjoyable for passengers. But the drivers of the city's 13,000 yellow cabs have protested, arguing that the new technology will cost them money and impinge on their privacy.
WHAT THE SYSTEM WILL DOThrough the GPS system, taxi passengers will be able to know where they are at any moment. For New Yorkers who never want to be out of touch, the monitors and tracking system will make a cab ride -- 13 minutes on average -- more enjoyable. Passengers will be able to follow sports scores, get up-to-the-minute news, weather and more. (Those who want some peace and quiet will be able to turn off the monitors.) The driver will also notified of traffic congestion in the area and of large parties or concerts that are ending – and could be fertile ground for finding fare-paying customers. With the new system, passengers can pay their fares using credit or debit cards.
Taxi and limousine commissioner Matthew Daus has called the tracking and the monitors “nothing short of revolutionary and evolutionary for the taxi industry" and has written that the technology “will benefit both drivers and customers.” The commission believes it will make it easier for tourists, who may not want to carry much cash, to use cabs. And the system believes such high-tech taxis will enhance New York’s image as the "city of the world.”
But cab drivers are not convinced. They worry that the tracking system will enable the police department and traffic agents to follow the cabs and prosecute drivers for violating traffic laws. “For myself, I am not against it, but I can see my fellow drivers being angry for being dictated to sacrifice for other people's extra entertainment," said one driver, Ibrahim Jane.
In order to find this case on Findlaw, just search for it using "J.S. vs...." You can then create a free account. The link to the specific case is: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/pennsylvaniastatecases/supreme/j-111-2001mo.pdf.
This case deals with a middle school student who created a Website with defamatory statements about one of his teachers and his school principle. The site, “Teacher Sux,” was created on his home computer but was accessed at school. When it was discovered, it created a stir at school and the teacher he had mentioned, Ms. Fulmer, suffered from stress-related illnesses. The following summer, the school board expelled the student from school for the Website. The student’s parents sued the school board for their decision. The case made it to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled that the Website did in fact cause “a material and substantial disruption of the school environment,” making it not protected under the 1st amendment (even though the speech did not constitute a “true threat”). Because the Website affected the school environment, it did not matter that the student had created it at home.
I am interested in how this precedent-setting case affects students’ postings on social networking sites of today, like Facebook.com and MySpace.com. Although these are log-in only websites, any one may gain access to them and may do so in a school environment. I wonder then if a student has been expelled for comments made on one of these social networking sites. This case brings to the forefront the issues of privacy and rights when it comes to personal postings on the internet, something that is all the more prevalent with the ubiquity of social networking sites in young people. The case illustrates the unique circumstances of a school environment and shows that the 1st amendment is limited in that space (going all the way back to the "Tinker" case which can also be found on FindLaw). What students put on their Facebook profiles or their friend’s wall can affect their standing at their university if it causes a “material and substantial disruption of the school environment” or portrays the student doing illegal activities. These Websites offer students a unique opportunity for self-expression and identity formation, but there is also the danger in the lack of privacy of internet postings.
After doing some research online, I found a case where students were suspended from school for writing offensive and vulgar comments about their teacher on each other's facebook.com walls. The school used the "material and substantial disruption" clause to justify why the students were suspended. Apparently, the comments, though posted on Facebook.com from home, caused a disruption in school. The article can be found at: http://www.fox21.com/Global/story.asp?S=6195724&nav=2KPp.
Call#: Van Pelt Library HM851 .A63 2005
This book is a sweeping look at the Internet and how it has changed the way that we view the world (a common cliché in Internet scholarship). Where I did find this book interesting though was in its discussion of privacy and the Internet. Also the witty tone of the book (one chapter is entitled “Saddam, O.J., and the Unabomber” and is about the Internet and pop culture) makes it an easy book to get into. The later chapters (starting with Ch. 12) discuss the trade-off between technology/access and privacy. Many people, especially in the older generations who have not grown up with the Internet, still think of the Internet in terms of the “Big Brother” metaphor. There is definitely a trade-off and some of the “Big Brother”-ness of the Internet (and social networks where often very personal information is revealed) is often inevitable. Something this book does not directly discuss is how generational this discomfort is. Younger generations who have grown up with the Internet, instant messenger, and online social networks are far more comfortable with a lack of privacy than older generations.
There is also another type of privacy that deals with the Internet: the privacy of being anonymous and creating an identity online. Chapter 13, “Nobody Knows You’re a Dog (or do they? Privacy issues and the Internet)" uses the image of the dog in front of the computer from the New Yorker cartoon to question how anonymity and privacy have changed. The author argues that maybe it used to be the case that “nobody knows you’re a dog” but now, they not only know you’re a dog, but they also know your favorite food and where you went walking yesterday. Applying the author’s point to social networks, it’s interesting that there is discomfort with a loss of privacy when in many cases, information is provided voluntarily. Of course, when it is appropriated for other uses, discomfort can ensue, but I think that (in many cases at least) with so much of one’s identity based on the Internet, it creates a double edged sword: you have to divulge information in order to create an online persona, but that also makes you vulnerable. I know that I am uncomfortable when Google puts up advertisements that correspond to my Gmail messages; and yet I still love my Gmail. In addition, Facebook.com has many privacy controls and options, but people were still livid when it added the “Live Feed” function. Of course, you could go to options and turn it off, but there erupted multiple groups on the site that were angry at this invasion of privacy. This book, especially the sections on privacy, were interesting in that they opened up more questions about how social networks interact with our lives both on and offline and how privacy or lack thereof can be a motivator for how identity is presented.
Call#: Van Pelt Library HQ798 .G525 2005
Beyond this though, another major function of social networks is to “quantify, measure, and verify one’s popularity with one’s peers” (214). That one is the most problematic to me, as networks become popularity and attractiveness contests – this is definitely seen on facebook.com and MySpace.com. One of the most popular features of these two social networking sites is the ability to upload and tag pictures. In that way, not only can young girls choose pictures that frame their identity in a certain way, but it is also a way to show off what one did the previous weekend and who one’s friends are. Clark discusses the fragility of this age, but does not directly address the physicality that is brought to the forefront in many social networks. However, she does discuss the important element of “control over one’s environment” (216) which expresses itself in the formation of identity and the presentation of an edited/deliberate version of the self. As a side note, there are some other interesting essays in this collection (there are 11 total in this volume) which deal with the gendered nature of Internet interactions and how teenagers take part in fan culture.