Whither Privacy

Did you know that every time you log on, you're leaving a 'digital footprint' behind? All those embarrassing party pictures of you clutching that red Solo plastic cup, all those digital rants, all those... well, some things are better left unshared. But it seems we can't resist online, and it's going to come back and haunt you:

Propelled by new technologies and the Internet’s steady incursion into every nook and cranny of life, collective intelligence offers powerful capabilities, from improving the efficiency of advertising to giving community groups new ways to organize.

But even its practitioners acknowledge that, if misused, collective intelligence toolscould create an Orwellian future on a level Big Brother could only dream of.

Collective intelligence could make it possible for insurance companies, for example, to use behavioral data to covertly identify people suffering from a particular disease and deny them insurance coverage. Similarly, the government or law enforcement agencies could identify members of a protest group by tracking social networks revealed by the new technology. “There are so many uses for this technology — from marketing to war fighting — that I can’t imagine it not pervading our lives in just the next few years,” says Steve Steinberg, a computer scientist who works for an investment firm in New York.

The article starts with a story of how MIT undergrads are paid to use special cellphones where their every keystroke and phone call is monitored. Could it be that our very notions of privacy are changing? In a recent article, the fiction author Jonathan Letham suggested that privacy is no longer monitoring what you share with the world, but trying to monitor who manages to reach you the Person. Let those embarrassing pictures circulate: what matters is whether or not someone gives you a hard time about them. Perhaps this is the right attitude for a digital age where we can't possibly manage all the information out there about us.

Mimi Ito on "On Point", WBUR.org

I'm currently listening to Tom Ashbrooke's "On Point" radio program on WBUR.org as he discusses the results of the Digital Kids study with Mimi Ito. He's also chatting with youth, too, which is great.

Mimi said something quite articulate about her study, calling it a picture of what kids are doing. And that's exactly what it is. But it doesn't talk about who is engaged online, what they're learning and, perhaps most importantly, what is lost. In our interviews with educators in the Developing Minds and Digital Media project, there is an underlying concern that kids are missing out on a lot. Nature, for one. The world around them, for another. One can argue that kids have never much been interested in what's going on around them, but that just doesn't wash; the impulse for learning has only been awakened via digital access?

And another: serendipity. And another: reflection.

Just call me an old fart. Go ahead. I won't hear you, because my hearing aid fell into my Metamucil.

Hanging out, messing around, geeking out -- DigiKids research paper

In case you managed to miss the media blitz -- The New York Times, the Washington Post, even the O'Reilly Factor -- Mimi Ito's group in California just released their seminal paper, "Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project."

It's beautifully written, and well-researched. However, I find myself hungry for context. Statements such as "Kids are mashing up content" make me want to ask, How _many_ kids? How old are they? What are they mashing up? Do they share it with friends? The project outlines two "genres of participation" -- friend-driven online engagement and interest-driven online engagement. That in and of itself is a valuable framing, but I find myself what constitutes a 'friend', as it seems from this document that it's anyone you have contact with. Is it the geek in class who tries to impress the cute girl by being extra competent? The report skirts around this issue by praising dabblers for capitalizing on their new technical skills, and mention the broad types of engagements, but misses the age-old conundrum of the geek and the pretty girl.

"We have also avoided categorizing practice on the basis of technology or parameters defined by media, such as media type or measures of frequency or media saturation." And given that their stated goal was to map out the parameters of participation, they have done an admirable job. Now it will fall to the rest of us to see how populated and nuanced each of these categories are.

I'm back!

... but who know for how long?

Congratulations to President-elect Obama, his family and supporters. I accompanied a New Orleans-style marching band tooting their way from Davis Square to Teele Ssquare in Somerville, waving to curious residents peering at us. When the news struck, I was half in the bag at a restaurant in Somerville with about forty other Democrats.

But enough about me. Reports are coming in about how, a scant four years after the supposedly 'permanent Republican majority' had been instituted, this stunning change in affairs could've happened. Some cite the youth vote, the weakness of the economy, the utter cluenessness of the other candidate. Others claim that it was merely an uptick in registered Dems. In any case, the election was inescapable. Even if you are eight years old and a big fan of Nickelodeon.