[Air-L] Privacy Buzz
Richard Forno
rforno at infowarrior.org
Wed Feb 17 04:15:00 PST 2010
On Feb 16, 2010, at 22:37 , Jean Burgess wrote:
> However, the commercial imperatives of platform providers introduce
> genuinely new and difficult questions, precisely because their ways of
> engaging us as users, their regulatory mechanisms, their governance
> structures etc etc take little or no account of their role in
> producing
> public good.
Let's take that a step farther and look at how these new
technologies are received and embraced by the masses. At times I
really think humans are like magpies -- we are attracted to shiny
objects and shall, after a cursory examination, incorporate said shiny
objects into our daily life, families, communities, industries, and
societies. Then -- and only then -- might we realize there may be any
consequences we might not like. But by then, it's too late, we've
grown accustomed to it, and so we shrug those concerns off (either
intentionally or otherwise) as the "price of living in the Internet
age" and carry on with our lives.
Actually that's an interesting thing to ponder, come to think of
it.....I see this within the information security realm all the time.
> Where you say Google's "provision of "free" services makes it come
> to feel
> more like a public utility than a cutthroat commercial entity", I
> say it in
> some ways actually *is* a public utility. And in fact our
> participation via
> these platforms already includes the practices of citizenship.
I've had this thought for a while now. At what point does a Google or
Akamai become a public utility? If Akamai goes down, what are the
consequences for not only informaiton distribution for companies *and*
government?
> But then thirdly, just because I want to say it (and not necessarily
> to you
> personally), I must say as a cultural studies scholar I can't accept
> the
> false consciousness explanation for how Googlespacebooktube have
> come to be
> popular in the first place (we are seduced by the tools of our own
> enslavement which we misrecognise as agency - by which one must mean,
> *other* people suffer from this misrecognition). If we want to dream
> of
> alternatives, then we need to understand this too, not as
> seduction/manipulation, but in terms of an invitation to participate.
The invitation is made by making it free, fun, and viral. So folks
flock like magpies toward it and then, as I said above, maybe realize
too late they can't easily 'disconnect' without breaking their social
ties in cyberspace, or at least making it more incovenient for others
to include them in interaction via such services. As I said the other
day, I have friends who would love me to be on Facebook because they
end up emailing me photos of events and reunions. Sure, it's a PITA
for them at times, and they may stop sending me updates......but since
I've chosen not to participate, I will deal with the consequences of
my decision. My social network is built, sustained, and coordinated
on my terms, not through any one company. Ergo I am beholden to
nobody's service. licensing, DRM, or proprietary API.[1] :)
Christian makes some good points. Embracing the shiny is not a bad
thing, we just need to recognize the potential consequences and not
just the convenience. A common maxim in the commodities futures
trading world is that "amateurs focus on how much they can make per
trade; responsible professionals focus on what they might lose per
trade." The same applies here on a variety of levels, I think.
-rick
[1] Though if the rumors of free Kindles for Amazon Prime customers is
true, I'll let 'em send me one and will download a few books to play
with the device. That said, I still prefer hard-copy that I 'own' and
ones where nobody can observe from afar how many pages I read, when I
read them, or if I skip a chapter. *g*
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