[Air-l] Cyborglogs: International Workshop on Camphones (community wisdomatics)

[Steve Mann]

> I am a casting producer over at the Sci Fi Channel and I am came across
> your name while doing research on Cyborgs for a show I am putting
> together.  I was wondering if you could offer some advice and direction.
> I am looking to speak to individuals who are transforming themselves into
> cyborgs or who function as cyborgs.  Please forgive me if I sound ignorant
...
> From: "Michael Gurstein" <mgurst at vcn.bc.ca>
> Subject: RE: [Air-l] the history of social infomatics

> Thanks to Kevin and Maja,
> 
> I only met Rob Kling once (at the AoIR meeting in Maastricht).  We were
> introduced by some mutual acquaintances.  We immediately entered into an
> intense conversation on Community Informatics vs. Social Informatics...
> I was struck by the fact that he had read (and deeply assimilated) all
> of what I thought were the relevant materials.
...
> His strongly but respectfully presented challenge was two-fold, first
> "what was new or different (from say, Social Informatics), about
> Community Informatics" and second if there was something new about CI,
> what were appropriate methodologies for analysing/researching in the
...
> As Kevin noted, he very generously made an invitation to prepare a
> "Position Paper" on Community Informatics for an upcoming issue of
> Information Society.  As these things happen, the article took rather
> longer than I would have liked when I received the shocking news of his
> untimely death.


You might find our upcoming workshop on what we might more aptly call
Community/Social Wisdomatics (Workshop on Inverse Surveillance)
to be of interest.  It's less about informatics and maybe more about
social interactions and not so much information and knowledge creation
but more about the wisdomain knowledge of knowing what areas of
research to study.  In any case it's all about Cyborglogs
(or 'glogs as they've become known), so it should certainly be
of interest to you or anyone else who'd like to submit a short 1
page extended abstract or a 4 page paper.

Here's the Call for Participation:

International Workshop on Inverse Surveillance:

Cameraphones, Cyborglogs, and Computational seeing aids;

exploring and defining a research agenda

Date: 2004 April 12th.
Time: 12:00noon to 4pm (a working lunch will be served)
Location: Colony Hotel (1-866-824-9330), 89 Chestnut Street, Toronto
Website: http://eyetap.org/iwis/

TOPICS:

     * Camera phones and pocket organizers with sensors;
     * Weblogs ('blogs), Moblogs, Cyborglogs ('glogs);
     * Wearable camera phones and personal imaging systems;
     * Electric eyeglasses and other computational seeing and memory aids;
     * Recording experiences in which you are a participant;
     * Portable personal imaging and multimedia;
     * Wearable technologies and systems;
     * Ethical, legal, and policy issues;
     * Privacy and related technosocial issues;
     * Safety and security;
     * Democracy and emergent democracy (protesters organizing with SMS
       camphones);
     * Technologies to prevent totalitarianism, state-terrorism, and genocide;
     * Technologies of lifelong video capture;
     * Personal safety devices and wearable "black box" recorders;
     * Research issues in "people looking at people";
     * Person-to-person sharing of personal experiences;
     * End of gender-specific space (e.g. blind man guided by wife: which
       restroom?);
     * Subjectright: ownership of photograph by subject rather than
       photographer;
     * Reverse copyright: protect information recipient, not just the
       transmitient;
     * Interoperability and open standards;
     * Algebraic Projective Geometry from a first-person perspective;
     * Object Detection and Recognition from a first-person perspective;
     * Computer Vision, egomotion and way-finding technologies;
     * Lifelong Image Capture: data organization; new cinematographic genres;
     * New Devices and Technologies for ultra miniature portable cameras;
     * Social Issues: fashion, design, acceptability and human factors;
     * Electronic News-gathering and Journalism;
     * Psychogeography, location-based wearable computing;
     * Augmented/Mediated/Diminished Reality;
     * Empowering children with inverse surveillance: Constructionist
       learning, creation of own family album, and prevention of both
       bullying by peers and abuse by teachers or other officials.

TO PARTICIPATE:

   IWIS 2004 will be a small intimate discussion group, limited to 25
   participants.

   Email your name, the name of your organization, and what you might add
   to the meeting, as part of a one page extended abstract, outlining
   your position on, and proposed contribution to the theme of inverse
   surveillance. Submissions should be sent by email to hilab [at]
   eyetap.org. Alternatively, authors may email up to four pages, in IEEE
   two column camera-ready format that address the theme of inverse
   surveillance. Prospective participants wishing to submit a full paper
   may also contact the workshop facilitators prior to submission.

   All participants (accepted papers or extended abstracts) will have the
   opportunity to contribute to the published proceedings.

   There is no workshop registration fee. There is no submission
   deadline; reviews will continue until there are sufficient numbers of
   high quality theme-relevant contributors.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

     * Dr. Jim Gemmell, MyLifeBits (lifetime data storage) project with
       Gordon Bell; author of various publications on lifelong personal
       experience capture, Microsoft research.
     * Joi Ito, Japan's leading thinker on technology; ranked among the
       "50 Stars" by Business Week; commended by Japanese Ministry of
       Posts and Telecommunications; chosen by World Economic Forum as
       one of the 100 "Global Leaders of Tomorrow"; Board member of
       Creative Commons; http://joi.ito.com/moblog2/
     * Anastasios Venetsanopoulos, Dean, Faculty of Applied Science and
       Engineering, University of Toronto; author on hundreds of
       publications on image processing.
     * John M. Kennedy, Chair, Department of Life Sciences, UTSC; author
       of Drawing and the Blind: Pictures to Touch.
     * Dr. Stefanos Pantagis, Physician, Hackensack University Medical
       Center; Geriatrician, doing research on wearable computers to
       assist the blind, and clinical work on brainwave EyeTap interfaces
       for Parkinson's patients.
     * Steve Mann, author of CYBORG: Digital Destiny and Human
       Possibility in the Age of the Wearable Computer; 30 years
       experience inventing, designing, building, and wearing devices and
       systems for personal imaging.
     * Douglas Schuler, former chair, Computing Professionals for Social
       Responsibility (CPSR); founding member SCN.
     * Stephanie Perrin, Former Chief Privacy Officer of Zero-Knowledge
       Systems; Former Director of Privacy Policy for Industry Canada's
       Electronic Commerce Task Force; responsible for developing
       domestic privacy policies, new technologies, legislation,
       standards and public education; recipient of the Electronic
       Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award.
     * Dr. Jason Nolan, Senior Fellow, Mcluhan Program in Culture and
       Technology
     * Dr. Nina Levent, art historian, New York Academy of Art; works with
       visually impaired; collaboration on using EyeTaps and
       wearcamphones in museum education.
     * Elizabeth Axel, founder, Art Education for the Blind, Inc. (AEB);
       collaboration on using EyeTaps and wearcamphones in museum
       education.
     _________________________________________________________________

   ORGANIZERS: S. Mann; S. Martin (smartin at ecf.utoronto.ca); and J.  Nolan.
   IWIS 2004 arises from planning over, the past 2 years, at
   Deconference 2002/2003.

   ADMINISTRATION: PDC, 416-978-3481 or toll free 1-888-233-8638

   PUBLICITY LIAISON: Daniel Chen (dan [at] eyetap.org), and
   Jacqueline MacNeil (jacq [at] ecf.toronto.edu).

     _________________________________________________________________

   This April 2004 Workshop, IWIS, will also serve as a planning forum
   for next year's Symposium: ISIS. Here's a summary of surveillance
   versus inverse surveillance, to lay the groundwork for the
   technologies and issues we hope to discuss:

Surveillance                           Sousveillance
------------                           -------------

God's eye view from above.             Human's eye view.
(Authority watching from on-high.)     ("Down-to-earth.")

Cameras usually mounted on high        Cameras down-to-earth (at
poles, up on ceiling, etc..            (ground level), e.g. at human
                                       eye-level.

Sur-veiller is French for "to          Sous-veiller is French for "to
watch from above".                     watch from below".

Architecture-centered                  Human-centered
(e.g. cameras usually mounted on       (e.g. cameras carried or worn
or in structures).                     by, or on, people).

Recordings made by authorities,        Recordings of an activity
remote security staff, etc..           made by a participant in the
                                       activity.

Note that in most states it's          In most states it's legal to
illegal to record a phone              record a phone conversation of
conversation of which you are          which you are a party.  Perhaps
not a party.  Perhaps the same         the same would apply to an
would apply to an audiovisual          audiovisual recording of your own
recording of somebody else's           conversations, i.e. conversations
conversation.                          in which you are a party.

Recordings are usually kept in         Recordings are often made public
secret.                                e.g., on the World Wide Web.

Process usually shrouded in            Process, technology, etc., are
secrecy.                               usually public, open source, etc..

Panoptic origins, as described         Community-based origins, e.g.
by Foucault, originally in the         a personal electronic diary,
context of a prison in which           made public on the World Wide Web.
prisoners were isolated from           Sousveillance tends to bring
each other but visible at all          together individuals, e.g. it
times by guards.  Surveillance         tends to make a large city
tends to isolate individuals           function more like a small town,
from one another while setting         with the pitfalls of gossip, but
forth a one-way visibility to          also the benefits of a sense of
authority figures.                     community participation.

Privacy violation may go               Privacy violation is usually
un-noticed, or un-checked.             immediately evident.  Tends
Tends to not be self-correcting.       to be self-correcting.

It's hard to have a heart-to-heart     At least there's a chance you can
conversation with a lamp post,         talk to the person behind the
on top of which is mounted a           sousveillance camera.
surveillance camera.

When combined with computers, we       When combined with computers, we
get ubiquitous computing               get wearable computing.
("ubiqcomp") or pervasive              ("wearcomp").  Wearcomp usually
computing ("pervcomp").                doesn't require the cooperation
Ubiq./perv. comp. tend to rely on      of any infrastructure in the
cooperation of the infrastructure      environments around us.
in the environments around us.

With surveillant-computing, the        With sousveillant-computing, it
locus of control tends to be with      is possible for the locus of
the authorities.                       control to be more distributed.

   See also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance