Group items tagged

Author finds that young people do care about privacy, but are more concerned with social privacy, rather than institutional privacy. "Contrary to much of the rhetoric in the debate around online privacy, the use of Facebook is not necessarily a choice free of coercion, nor are the reasons for sharing information on the site simply about self-obsession or exhibitionism." Rather it is a dominate expression of online identity and a way to communicate with peers. This is following one of the important points of Wesch - that there is no opting out of new media once the community starts to participate.

A proposed privacy law could help as well as hurt America's web companies. A "privacy bill of rights" was introduced on March 16 by Obama, which will outline internet privacy rights. Internet Explorer and Firefox will have more do-not -track features in their new versions. Privacy laws are stricter in the EU.

This is an article about a British court ruling about privacy, identity and journalism and their lack of privacy on the internet. Strangly this week a US Court ruled on a similar case but said FB statements cannot be used to fire an employee. Interesting the differences in the UK and US rulings.

This is data that will cause some privacy issues. Now one can really be connected.

wow, and the data persists even when you upgrade the phone! The article says "In some ways, this shouldn't be surprising. Back in June of 2010, Apple updated its privacy policy to include a paragraph that allows Apple and "partners and licensees" to collect and store user location data." But of course hardly anyone reads the fine print.

Here is the open source tool the researchers made with the location data: http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/

Provides online tools and recommendations for protecting oneself in an online community.

Argues that Terms of service (TOS) agreements have implications for the political and legal structures under which our virtual selves will function. Also, the Wall Street Journal has actually been running fantastic series of investigative reports on this topic, called "what they know": http://online.wsj.com/public/page/what-they-know-digital-privacy.html

Social Informatics Researcher, who was noted in the first week, Oosteeven, is involved in this research effort. I have not studied in detail yet, but this looks interesting.

Note: this is a rumor, but it's interesting if this service will be lauched: "With Circles, I believe that Google will attempt to accomplish something critics from the blogosphere, academia, SXSW 2010 keynoter danah boyd, privacy watchdogs and others have all called on the social networking world to do: to allow our online communication to respect the same boundaries that our offline social lives do."

nothing has been announced yet. it is interesting that google is so visited and has so many users, but has yet to effectively incorporate social networking... i.e. buzz and wave had huge hyped, but it quickly burned away.

This (long) report discusses the use of ICTs in the medical field, primarily IN the human body

I'm not sure if I would characterize this topic as being part of social informatics. Cochlear implants, insulin pumps, and spinal chord devices, just to name a few of the devises, do have interactive measures with the human body. However, social informatics is the study of how ICTs affect people's relationships and aspects of their social contexts. Although these devises influence the lives of their users, this article mainly discusses the ethical implications of using these technologies and the regulations that need to be developed to standardize use.

Well, interestingly enough, some of my undergrads over the years have been fascinated by RFID implants and the ethical implications of those actions. It is possible that a simple little think like an insulin pump, or any kind of pump would have an impact on one's actions and lifestyle. See this amazing talk by Charity Tillman-Dick: http://www.ted.com/talks/charity_tilleman_dick_singing_after_a_double_lung_transplant.html

This refers to how less restrained people feel on the internet v. real life. This might seem more related to internet identity, but it can have huge effects on civil community on the internet too. I thought of this when I read "One important social rule was built into the software that the WELL lives inside: Nobody is anonymous. Everybody is required to attach their real userid to their postings" (Rheingold, Chapter 1).

This article discusses SXSW-Interactive, the technology portion of the festival. This is the festival where Twitter was first launched in 2007. Theme so far: the blurring of real life and online life is happening. Other topics discussed: web 3.0, asymmetry of privacy, biomimicry (designing technology to mimic nature), work/life balance. Clay Shirky also gave a presentation on social media and revolution: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/12/sxsw-2011-clay-shirky-social-media

A fascinating look "under the hood" of the technology used to collect the massive amounts of personal data that is created via social media. After givng an overview of the companies involved and how they achieve this, the article examines some of the ethical issues involved.

Did anyone else notice this link from the previous week? Left wing gad about Douglas Rushkoff starts to question the unintended consequences for the user of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. may have created exciting new ways for us to interact "virtually", but we pay for it, even when it's free.

I really like that he advocates that students (& all people) learn to program. People resisted learning to type too! And while it is harder, no harder than learning to read or write.

This section of the AARP site provides articles for seniors with information on buying tips, new tools, privacy & security, social media and other recommendations on using technology. The articles are for the novice as well as the experienced technology user. Specific to our conversation on digital divide are the articles on "Boomers Catching Up in Technology Use"

Should all of the information on us be made available to us?

Google says that phones need to know your location to provide services.

This google video showing its datacenter and security, is probably in response to the amazon outage last week

Yahoo changes its policy on search queries from 90 days to 18 months.

This article also references the incident in 2006 when AOL released its search query data: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?gwh=300ED81FDF596D5587EF12FC33E8FE03

This is a few years old but it's a slide presentation from Paul Adams, ex-Googler, currently Facebook product manager. His work was influential in the new Facebook "groups," and the rumored Google product "circles."

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