Dating service OkCupid has cheerfully admitted to manipulating what it shows users, a month after Facebook faced a storm of protest when it revealed that it had conducted psychological experiments.
OkCupid doesn't really know what it's doing. Neither does any other website. It's not like people have been building these things for very long, or you can go look up a blueprint or something. Most ideas are bad. Even good ideas could be better.
"Facebook's News Feed-the main list of status updates, messages, and photos you see when you open Facebook on your computer or phone-is not a perfect mirror of the world.
But few users expect that Facebook would change their News Feed in order to manipulate their emotional state."
"Through the design, development and implementation of the Living Room of the Future (LRoTF), we build upon existing work to progress two strands of research. The first explores how media broadcasters may utilise Object-Based Media (OBM) to provide more immersive experiences. Created in conjunction with the BBC R&D the LRofTF utilizes OBM to dynamically customise television content according to audiences' personal, contextual and derived data. OBM works by breaking media into smaller parts or 'objects', describing how they relate to each other semantically, and then reassembling them into personalized programmes. In addition to this media-delivery aspect, the LRoTF explores data protection issues that arise from OBM's use of data
by integrating with the privacy-enhancing Databox system. "
"Is it the ultimate surveillance scenario or a step forward in the passenger experience? Or maybe a little bit of both?? Vendors are cooperating today to deliver integrated biometrics in the inflight entertainment system,"
"MorphCast is a new adaptive interactive format that engages audiences whilst protecting their privacy. MorphCast combines interactive video with emotional and demographic response to create a new type of adaptive video experience within the mobile device, powered by artificial intelligence and without the need for plug-ins, apps or the user's personal data. It runs on nearly every smartphone, tablet or PC through a URL."
"Data Sense is a research experiment at Intel Labs. We wanted to see if it is possible to make data more accessible to those of us without stats degrees. To test out some ideas, we built this tool. "
"Self-host your online community and shape your experience at the most granular level: add and remove features, change behaviours and appearance, tune, swap or turn off algorithms. You are in total control."
Someone who knows things about us has some measure of control over us, and someone who knows everything about us has a lot of control over us. Surveillance facilitates control.
Uber, realizing it had hundreds of millions of people in its back seats as a captive audience, just announced it will allow third-party apps the ability to serve up notifications, content, or ads to its users during their trips. The notifications would be customized to the length and locations of each person's ride, but only with permission from the user.