Rethinking Privacy Part 2

In part 1 I talked about how people should focus more on how people are using their data rather than just obsessing over the invasion of privacy. Not many people actually stalk you with that information, it's used for marketing purposes and statistical data or even to ensure safety such as in places like the airport.

Leading off of the idea of the importance on how "invasion of privacy" is used, the concept of parents being able to track their children should be of more concern. Unlike companies and the government who track you as simply a number in a system, parents are interested in exactly what their children are doing and why.

When is it appropriate to stalk your child? "Stalking" is a strong word, but by definition it is pursuing someone with "unwanted or obsessive attention" (dictionary.com). Most teenagers would describe getting tagged with a GPS tracker as falling under that category. How about for young children who don't know any better than to trust strangers or wander off? I personally think GPS trackers, particularly in a theme park where there are so many distractions and so many people that it's easy to lose your child, where is that line when the child becomes too old to be constantly followed?

By insisting on tracking your teenager, it can create problems where the teenager thinks you don't trust them enough to make the right decisions. Shouldn't there be a moment when you have to be satisfied that you raised your child to make good decisions? If not, trying to control them into their teenage years or young adulthood isn't going to have any impact on them except make them resent you more for your lack of trust.

I think parents need to make their own distinction based on their child's personality and maturity when to let go of the tracker, although if they continue using it into their child's teenage years that would be cause for concern. We need to worry about defining that line between using tracking devices for safety or for stalking.

Responsibility

In a world where the internet is an open and free marketplace of ideas, one must realize that this "free" and open marketplace is not truly free. As I've said before, the internet levels the playing field, giving power to the humble masses of the untelevised and the uncontracted. This is a source, a wonderful outlet, to exercise 1st Amendment rights and let your voice be heard in an open venue.

However, this marketplace of ideas isn't exactly free. It comes with certain responsibilities tied to posting your opinion online for all the world to partake of.

With great power comes great responsibility....

Yes I just made that reference.

It's like Dr. Mike said the other day in other day in class, "Is everyone entitled to their opinion?" And of course, as he iterated, NO. They're entitled to have their informed opinion. Those two syllables make all the difference in the kind of opinion that should be allowed to be expressed online, via these 1st Amendment rights. To have an opinion is one thing. Exhibit A: The frivolous hypothetical example....Say your friend is wearing a new yellow dress. It compliments her figure, and the color brings out her eyes brilliantly. The stitching is just gorgeous and the material is to die for. You compliment her on it, saying that that particular designer is a genius, and she thanks you with a smile. This is the opinion of someone who is seeing a solution from one side of the glass. This could be an example of an uninformed opinion. But say you were to find out that the Chinese orphans that sewed that dress together in a sweatshop were paid only four cents an hour and were forced to stretch themselves beyond the means of most child labor laws. Suddenly, that dress doesn't look quite as fabulous. Now, you are able to have an informed opinion about that particular designer and how their business is run.

Now of course, that's a ridiculous example, but I didn't want to use a real-life example. The main point being that rather than shutting oneself off from all sides of an issue, you should expose yourself fully to all points of view before forming an original thought to post for all the world to see. Know that it is your responsibility to your first amendment rights. You can have any opinion you like, that is, any informed opinion.

Insights and More Tie-Ins

I think the ideas we've been discussing in class recently are really interesting. It's helping me understand how we use technology in all new ways, which I suppose is the point.  It's likely that most people our age, because we grew up with all this rapidly developing technology, have gone through our lives as passive receivers of technological information, without really taking the time to figure out hows and whys of it.  How it works and why it works and how and why we should or shouldn't use it.  The idea is to be informed, and this point is often missed on people our age--or maybe even people in general.

Another tie-in with one of my other classes is that we recently read a short story that takes place in a futuristic virtual world.  This world is much like the "real" world, but things like graphic violence and sex are not possible...yet.  As the story unfolds, the main character and others discover that new developments are being made, and that these things are increasingly more possible.  Someone stabs the main character, and he actually begins to virtually die--all the progress he's made in this virtual world will be erased if he dies completely.  The persons stabbing him thinks it's funny. Then he learns that his virtual girlfriend is actually a man in real life, and has a wife and kids. When the main character learns this, he goes from wanting to find some way to stay alive in this world, to telling his attacker to stab him more.

I believe the point the author is trying to make with this story is that technology can often cause us to detach from things emotionally, and to adopt the mindset that because something his happening in virtual space, it is irrelevant to or cannot affect people in the "real" world. But if one thinks about it, things that occur through technology are as real as anything else, but in a different way.  The things one does on the internet can affect real people in the physical world. I thought all that was relevant to this class.

YouTube Comments Glitch to 200 Character Limit: Causes Discussion on Discourse

Don't get me wrong. I've never perceived YouTube comment sections as the best place to have discussion on a topic, but given the right group of people, discussion could be useful.

However, YouTube (or should I say Google?) briefly had a glitch in which the character limit on comments changed from 500 to 200. Google employees cleared up this issue on the forums saying the 200 character limit was not intentional, but this news didn't even reach well-known celebrities on YouTube.

The popular video blogger and best selling author John Green had this to say on his twitter:

Of course, one can not avoid the irony that this was posted to Twitter, which has an infamous 140 character limit to text, the equivalent to soundbites on television. Despite this, Twitter is meant to be a place to see snippits of information, sometimes followed by a link to more information.

YouTube comments on the other hand don't have a specific goal in mind. Sure, it's meant to be used to give the creator of the video feedback, but it sometimes becomes a discussion. In the best (a.k.a. rarest) cases, there will be meaningful discourse about the subject of the video. In the worst cases, there will be religious or political discussion on a cat video.

Dan Brown made this video in response to John Green's tweet, outlining how 200 characters can actually be a good thing.



Dan Brown seems to be saying that limiting comments to 200 characters prevents users from being intimidated by the "immense wall of text" and forces commenters to "get to the point." Are we really at that point where 500 characters is considered too much for people to handle? I'm also very concerned about Dan's opinion that users should "embrace any and all experimentation on YouTube's part to try to make the comment section [better.]"

Dan Brown did bring up the interesting point that limiting the character limit on typed comments would encourage people to make more video responses. While I support this new form of internet discourse, it poses a problem for me for two reasons. (1) Not everyone on the Internet or YouTube has a camera, though it seems like a great majority do. Even though this is not a huge problem, it still leaves out a portion of the Internet population. (2) If all the text comments were changed to video responses, YouTube servers would have trouble handling the increased data flow. I think it's pretty common knowledge that videos take up more space on servers than text.

Of course, a lot of this discussion on whether YouTube should have a 200 character limit or not is moot, since it was not a legitimate change in the system, but rather a glitch. It did spawn a rather interesting debate on how discourse on YouTube should take place.

Rethinking Privacy Part 1

Morville's chapter five made me a bit more aware--and thus more paranoid about what the future holds for privacy.

To be honest, I've never understood why so many people are paranoid about their privacy. For example one of my teachers is angry that Ball State tracks when you are in the gym. At a glance that looks like an invasion of privacy, but what does privacy even mean?

As a society we like our privacy, but years ago before cars puttered around and expanded our living radius to more than 20 miles, communities were just as intimate. They knew who you were, where you were and what you did.

I think the issue here is what people do with your information. When my professor said he was enraged about Ball State's tracking system, I didn't see it from the same point of view. Despite our best efforts, we are going to become more "findable." I think the important thing is what is done with the information. Honestly, I doubt Ball State actually cares about you. They don't care whether you are in the gym or not. They don't use it to track you as a person, just to see how many people are in the gym.

Another example of privacy invasion is airport security with the new x-ray system. People feel like that is an invasion of privacy, but if the trade off of that is to stop terrorists, I'm okay with that. I can suffer having strangers who will never see me again be able to see the outline of my body.

Again, I think an important matter is to determine what the government/businesses are using your information for. People don't like security cameras, but it helps deter crime. If someone kidnaps me, I'll be thankful that they will be able to find the last place I was seen. These are rare circumstances, but they happen. Overall, the government/businesses don't care about YOU, they care about information to make their business run better and more efficiently. They aren't stalking you.

We need to rethink privacy because unless you plan on living like a hermit, our idea of "privacy" is going to be invaded on a daily basis.

With that being said, there is another type of privacy invasion that is different from observation by strangers: Invasion of privacy by parents/family/friends. While the government doesn't care about you, being tracked by family members has a whole new meaning. They DO care about where you are and what you do. For me personally, that's the real "invasion of privacy," not Ball State tracking my location every time I swipe my ID card.

Because this is such a big issue, I'm going to split it in to two blogs and post the second part next week. In Part 2 I will talk about the other type of privacy invasion by family and friends, specifically concerning tracking children/teens with a GPS tracker.

The Machine is using us...

My dad always told me don't believe everything you hear and don't believe everything you read. Don't believe everything that's on TV, and don't believe everyone that has power. Don't even believe everything that he says. He thinks that it is so important for young people to form their own opinions about what happens in the world, provided that they are well-informed. And most people with internet access cannot help but be "well-informed."

We talked today about why it's important that we know who the major players are in digital literacy. Government and business all concerned with how people are consuming and processing information they receive. Sarah posted a blog last week about how the internet offers equal opportunities in posting information and opinions online. Even in Wikipedia, anybody with an internet connection can go onto the website and edit articles to their heart's content, with or without citation. While this level playing field can be a good example of the First Amendment, that doesn't mean that information-devouring web surfers should be swallowing everything they read.

It's hard to think of our society as a series of robots, who are being fed information and processing it as truth, just like computers when they are built. Because we are human beings, and therefore are able to think, process, and form our own opinions, some may not want to accept that out of mental sloth, we are willing to accept opinions as FACT. There are man people who subscribe to a specific political party or title, who are listening to the words of their leaders and decided that because that is the opinion of their party, that is also their personal opinion. It scares me how easily some Americans can be so easily swayed by the power of oratory in this country. The automation of the internet and its vast cesspool of opinion and here-say is having a similar effect.

Now, the end of the Web 2.0 makes me think on a whole new level, especially near the end, where it makes the statement that we are going to have to do a lot of rethinking, especially ourselves. And that means, I think, the reexamination of how we process information, not only by receiving it, but decided what it means to us and whether or not we agree.

1984 Findability?

This new book we're reading is really making me think, which I guess is the point. It was written seven years ago and I've still never heard of this technology.  It interests and disturbs me at the same time.  But is it really all that different from tracking what we do online? Not really, since people do almost everything online nowadays.  It can be good in some ways and bad in others, just like any technology...but the fact that we don't have a say, that it's happening to us automatically, is scary to me.  It's coming to the point where almost anyone can find out anything about you with a few clicks of a mouse.  It's like something from 1984. And if you haven't read that, you definitely should!  It seems to get more and more relevant as technology is developed. Just a few thoughts that surfaced while reading Ambient Findability.