Going Loca: Privacy in a digital world July 15, 2008
Posted by digitalnatives in : digital privacy, digital identity, Uncategorized , 3commentsAs more and more of our lives become enmeshed in the digital world, more and more of our lives are detected, stored, and compiled by the digital systems that serve us. As we call friends on cell phones, navigate streets with GPS systems, login to Facebook from our notebooks, and swipe our employer IDs at cafeteria cashiers, bits of data are collected about us, stored, and compiled in various databases, owned by diverse entities. This collection of digital tracks that we leave behind add up to form our digital dossier.
Compiled all together, this data can say a lot about us. But who has access to this data? How is it collected, and how is it stored? And what rights do you have over your own data? These are important questions to ask – especially for Digital Natives, who are leaving digital tracks from birth, compiling a digital dossier vaster and more detailed than any generation that has come before.
What does this mean for Digital Natives? What does this mean for the future?
Our research indicates that Digital Natives are often unaware of the data that is being collected about them, and what this means for their privacy. The young people we talked to that were aware of privacy concerns often became so after a “learning moment” – something happened to them that made them uncomfortable, and think twice about their privacy online.
Learning by error can work, but it can also be costly. How do we teach youth (and adults, for that matter) to be aware of the data that is being collected about them, to be wary of privacy issues, and to become informed actors in the debate over the ever growing market of information in our new digital world? This is a question we grapple with here at the Digital Natives project, and at the Berkman Center more widely.
A group of designers - John Evans, Drew Hemment, Theo Humphries, and Mike Raento - have come up with one interesting way. They’ve designed a grass roots surveillance system called Loca.
Loca aims to enable people to question the networks they populate, and to expose the disconnect between people and the trails of digital identities they leave behind.
The creators of Loca used old mobile phones to create a monitoring system that tracks all mobile phone users in the vicinity that have their Bluetooth set to discoverable. The system collects data on individuals’ whereabouts, tracking users’ movements, and sending users messages in response to knowledge of their whereabouts. Individuals in the area with mobile phones, without doing anything, receive messages such as:
We have seen you here five times in the last three days.
Or
You spent 30 minutes in the park and then walked past the flower stall. Are you in love?
After such a message spooks a user, it then challenges people to think. Users also receive a message indicating the whereabouts of the Loca headquarters, where they can scan their mobile phone and receive a printout of the every time and location where the system detected them, providing a physical manifestation of the surveillance of their movements.
As the Loca video below explains,
Messages sent to users make the presence of the network know, and illustrate the types of data that can be gathered, and the inferences that can be drawn from it…[Loca] aims to raise awareness of the networks we inhabit, and provoke people to questioning them.
Loca brings up interesting questions for users who were tracked in San Jose, California at ISEA2006. But what about those of us who will never encounter this provocative system? Reading privacy agreements is boring, and can be very confusing. How can we bring awareness to the privacy issues raised by our ever growing digital dossier – and encourage people to think critically - in fun and educational ways?
Living in a digital world makes many things more convenient, available, and even simply possible to achieve. But often, the very tool that makes something good – like mobile activism – possible, also raises concerns in other areas, like privacy. Privacy laws need to safeguard the individuals whose data is being collected. But individuals – especially Digital Natives, who are growing up in a digital world, and will come to lead us into our digital future – need to take an active role in the formation of a society that deals with information and privacy in a responsible and human-centered way. The first step in addressing the issues of information collection, retention, and sharing – and the concern for the future of privacy – is by raising awareness.
- Miriam Simun
From Email to Blog: A DN Debate on Cyberbullying May 19, 2008
Posted by kurquoise in : digital safety, digital privacy , 1 comment so farA few weeks ago, a debate was going around on the Digital Natives listserv about bullying and its echoes in the digital world. Among the participants were danah boyd, Miriam Simun, David Weinberger, Gene Koo, and Sam Jackson.
danah boyd kicked off the discussion with this definition of bullying used in a Crimes Against Children Research Center (CCRC) report:
As noted by Olweus (2001), “a student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more students.” The preceding definition highlights the aggressive component of bullying as well as the associated inherent power imbalance and repetitive nature. There are a wide range of behaviors consistent with bullying, including physical, verbal, and relational manifestations.
But as it turned out, even agreeing on a definition of bullying was tricky. The same study states that 30% of youth in the United States report involvement in moderate or frequent bullying, a number that David Weinberger found shocking. The problem, he surmised, was that bullying is being defined too broadly. Do teasing, social exclusion, and bullying all belong in the same category? Or do they represent starkly different motivations and different levels of severity?
In cyberspace, these distinctions between these behaviors become increasingly blurred. While the word bully most likely conjures up the big, mean kid who beats others up on the playground, cyberbullying is obviously not physical. Relational bullying or relational aggression – essentially emotional bullying that involves exclusion, gossip, lying, etc. Think Mean Girls – is especially prevalent among, not surprisingly, girls. Sam Jackson cited a study that 71.4% of girls and 21.1% of boys who experienced bullying were victims of relational bullying (Henington, Hughes, Cavell, & Thompson, 1998). This is also the same kind of bullying that is made easier online. Add this to the miscommunication implicit in online interactions versus face-to-face ones and you have a problem that is at once unique to the Internet yet grounded in real life social interactions.
The danger of lumping together all different forms of social intimidation like teasing and social exclusion into the serious category of bullying is distorting the severity of the problem. The debate then turned to education about bullying in schools, which both danah and David see as having adopted a loose definition of bullying. There are merits to this, of course, such as stopping teasing before it escalates into something more severe, but it also problematizes policies regarding real bullying. Gene Koo was pointed out that we also need to teach victims to deal with bullying: “Most people only know how to fight back, not how to change the power dynamic.” Kids should be taught conflict resolution.
Not surprisingly, the discussion constantly focused circled back to real world bullying. The Internet introduces new elements to the problem, but many of the basic issues are the same.
Further Reading: Pew Cyberbullying Report
-Sarah Zhang
DN Forum: ID & Privacy Roundup May 2, 2008
Posted by digitalnatives in : digital privacy, digital identity , 1 comment so farToday, we at the Digital Natives project held our first Digital Natives Forum. With so many great people in attendance, the discussion was really thought provoking. Check out the video, soon to be posted on the Berkman site.
Andrea Flores and John Francis from Harvard Graduate School of Education’s GoodPlay project started off by presenting some initial findings from their research of young people and ethics online. They described the opportunities online tools give young people to explore their identities in new ways, and how these identities are tied to new norms and conceptions of privacy arising among the digital generation. Also, that young people tend to be concerned about privacy only if they perceive dire consequences to such a compromise.
Judith Donath responded by pointing out the persistence of the ephemeral. Disclosures that young people make online now may not seem important - or to have dire consequences - but what happens twenty years from now?
With this, discussion got started.
We have the ability to track people’s past to an unprecedented degree, as young people traverse online territories, compiling their digital dossiers
So what do we do?
Spell (or draw) it out: Tools need to be better built, for sure, to help clue users in to just how visible one’s personal information is, how much information is being collected by various parties, how this information moves through space. Donath touched on an idea of exploring what it means to be photographed in public spaces: a hidden camera, vs. a subtle-yet-noticeable camera, vs. a very explicit camera. How might we behave differently in front of each one? How may we build social tools online and in digital space that may visibly reflect the privacy individuals compromise when they engage?
Educate, educate, educate! How do we instill ethics? How do we teach the importance of privacy, both protecting your own, and respecting others?
And finally, John Palfrey pushed things a bit further. Education is surely very important in this arena, to empower youth with the critical skills needed to navigate safely and ethically in the arena. And so are better tools, in order to display appropriate information for us to make good decisions, and to encourage thoughtful engagement with what it is we do when we share personal information online. But, is this enough?
No. Laws need to change. As it stands now, we as individuals have very little rights over our personal information. Once we tick the box of the Terms of Service, we very often give complete and total power to the platform to do what they will with everything we share through these services. John suggests that this needs to change: Individuals must have legal ownership and control over their data. Only then will we be able to both live digitally, and retain some control over our sense of privacy.
- Miriam Simun
Where the Wild Things Are: 8 Links for Parents March 5, 2008
Posted by dianakimball in : digital privacy, digital identity, Uncategorized , 1 comment so farThe Internet can feel like a jungle to the uninitiated—full of weird sights and sounds, a little terrifying, and very hard to navigate. We gave a talk to parents at the incredible BB&N high school last week, and to commemorate the event, I put together a list of 8 essential links for parents who want to understand their childrens’ world a little better. So: click around! Explore! It’s what all the cool kids are doing these days.
Learning 2.0: 23 Things
This list of 23 services and activities to try out on the Internet provides
a guided, exploratory tour of a small slice of what the Internet has to
offer. The best way for parents to better guide their children through the
ins and outs of the Internet is for the parents to understand it better themselves. Completing these fun digital adventures is a huge step toward understanding the capabilities and dangers of the Internet.
Net Family News
Make sense of the latest developments in children’s privacy and activities online. Net Family News publishes a blog and a weekly email newsletter that address these issues and explain their relevance and implications for
parents.
Connect Safely
Great forums where parents can ask questions about children’s privacy and activities online. Also associated with Net Family News. Includes a prominent focus on cyberbullying.
Parent.Thesis Blog
Two tech-savvy parents explore the ways that technology intersects with
their lives and the lives of their children. A great way to learn about
cutting-edge technologies.
Totally Wired
Although Anastasia Goodstein no longer updates this blog, it remains an invaluable resource for parents seeking to understand the online worlds of
their children. Note especially the right-hand list of links; categories
like “Where Teens Blog” provide an unusually comprehensive collection of
sites that parents should be aware of. This list of links serves as an
essential jumping-off point for any parent hoping to delve into
understanding the online realities their children face.
PBS Frontline: Growing Up Online: Parenting in the Internet Age
Frontline’s recent documentary, “Growing Up Online,” provides an essential (if somewhat alarmist) view into the digital world that children encounter on a daily basis. The documentary’s site also serves as a thorough compendium of resources and information on the topic. This particular page offers expert perspectives on how to conceptualize the task of parenting when so much of young people’s activity occurs “invisibly” online.
Why Youth Heart Myspace
This classic talk by Berkman fellow danah boyd provides an essential primer on the appeals of social networking. Though this talk was later expanded into an academic paper, the notes to the original presentation provide an engaging introduction to the matter.
A YouTube Primer for Parents
Short video, from 2006 but still relevant, telling parents what they need to know about YouTube.
Digital Natives in the Press February 21, 2008
Posted by digitalnatives in : participation gap, digital privacy, digital creativity, digital identity , 1 comment so farToday’s New York Times features an article about differences in content creation among girls and boys: Pew reports that girls in the US are bigger bloggers and upload more photos, while boys are bigger vidders. Why?
Just follow socializing of gender for generations - it’s still the same, just migrated online. As quoted in the NYT:
“With young women it’s much more about expressing yourself to others in the way that wearing certain clothes to school does,” said John Palfrey, the executive director of the Berkman Center. “It ties into identity expression in the real world.”
Harvard Magazine reports about Urs Gasser and John Palfrey’s upcoming book, Born Digital. Here, Palfrey highlights the issue of the digital dossier:
Palfrey believes companies should be required to disclose—either in plain English or on an icon resembling a nutritional label—what they do with the information they collect. “What is it that you collect and store about me?” he would ask. “Is it only what I put in, or is it my browsing habits? Do you share [data] with any third parties? How long do you keep all of [it]?”
- Miriam Simun
Deleting Facebook February 18, 2008
Posted by kurquoise in : digital privacy, Uncategorized , 4commentsAfter getting a fair amount of criticism in the mainstream press, Facebook has finally made it possible to delete a Facebook account. Prior to this, users could only “deactivate” accounts, in which case their personal information was no longer available on Facebook but was still stored on the company’s servers.
Despite much ado in the media, most of the college-age friends I’ve talked to have found the issue trivial. “Why would you even want to delete your Facebook account?” was their flippant response. Yet that is exactly why this issue is important. The fear is that because Facebook has become so ingrained in the lives of young people, it then establishes the norm for digital privacy. Unlike Beacon or News Feed, Facebook’s permanent storage of personal information doesn’t readily jump out as a violation of privacy. And because it is not obvious, it has taken over 3 years for it to change, in contrast to the much more immediate responses to Beacon and News Feed.
What is most disturbing then, is Facebook’s pattern of behavior. Although Facebook often emphasizes privacy as one of its strengths (compared to MySpace at least), its actions have proved otherwise. It has consistently pushed the limits of privacy, only step back in the face of a backlash. Perhaps it’s not so out of line to say that Facebook would not have put controls on Beacon if not for the media attention it received.
A few months ago, when Beacon was making its debut, I had the opportunity to sit in a guest lecture by Chris Kelly, the chief privacy officer of Facebook. He spoke a lot on the need to balance business decisions with PR, which the company, given its success, has done quite well. I’m inclined to believe it won’t have this type of popularity forever though. So at point will users become disenchanted with Facebook? But will this be a matter of privacy or convenience? Will Facebook have permanently changed our conceptions of privacy by then?
-Sarah Zhang
MySpace Photo Leak February 4, 2008
Posted by kurquoise in : digital safety, digital privacy, digital information overload , add a commentUntil recently, MySpace had a serious security flaw that allowed photos of users whose profiles were set to private to be viewed by anyone. Two weeks ago, user called DMaul uploaded a 17 GB file of more than 500,000 private Myspace photos available for download on torrent sites. The file was the 9th most downloaded file on torrent sites that week.
According to Wired, the file quickly lost popularity after people realized it was a random collection of typical photos — weddings, babies, birthday parties. DMaul has come forward to explain his actions, saying “I think the greatest motivator was simply to prove that it could be done. It is ridiculous to think that there is privacy on public websites. These types of situations are more education than anything.” So DMaul’s actions indeed had no malicious intent, and they should by taken for their educational value.
The real kicker is that the security flaw was known on various message boards for months before it was fixed. What’s even more disconcerting is how this flaw was exploited. A thread on the discussion forum Sohh.com back in October consisted of a self-described “pedo army” sharing the private galleries of 15 and 16-year-old girls. There have even been YouTube videos and commercial websites touting this flaw. It was only after Wired broke the story that MySpace finally fixed the hole. I’m also surprised that despite a fair amount of coverage in the blogosphere, the story hasn’t made it into the mainstream news either.
MySpace has so far refused to comment on the situation, so it’s hard to say whether MySpace was unaware of the situation or was aware and didn’t act on it. Either way, the blame should lie with MySpace for flouting the privacy of its users for so long. While most teens are perfectly aware of the dangers of leaving their profiles open, there is the expectation that profiles set to private will indeed be private. Is this expectation rational in today’s world? Surely the millions of people who do their banking or shopping online would think so. Social networking sites should be taking the privacy of its users more seriously, especially when minors are concerned. It has been suggested that sites like MySpace need to create special task forces that will prowl the Internet looking for security flaws as they arise. When users have done their part to protect their privacy, MySpace should do its part too.
Frontline’s “Growing Up Online”: What about the digital dossier? January 28, 2008
Posted by digitalnatives in : participation gap, digital safety, digital privacy, digital identity , 2commentsPBS recently aired “Growing Up Online” (and posted the entire episode on their website) - an inquisitive look into the lives of so-called Digital Natives. The program presented a world of young people spending much of their lives immersed in digital media - constantly connected to friends and others via mobile phones and web sites such as MySpace and YouTube. These are the lives of young people who are the first generation to grow up online, or those “born digital”, to borrow the term from John Palfrey’s and Urs Gasser’s forthcoming book of the same title. Frontline addressed several of the key issues the Digital Natives project is investigating, including education in the age of internet, online identity play, cyber-bullying, and online sexual predators.
While the documentary hinted at the types of creative expression and activity taking place online, the focus was very much on the risks associated with socializing on the internet. Discussion of young people’s private lives, which are increasingly taking place online, touched upon the shifting notions of privacy among youth raised with a mouse in-hand, and a number of the issues regarding the wide and unknown audience they present themselves to. Hats off to Frontline for taking a fair - and realistic - stance in addressing the sexual predator issue. Despite media portrayal of sexual predators lurking behind every corner of the internet - NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” has quite a good hand in this – research is beginning to show that this is a seriously, and dangerously, overblown threat. A Cal State study by Larry Rosen mentioned in the program found that young people on MySpace are rarely approached for sexual liaisons, and those that are tend to be seeking these types of interactions. Our research on the Digital Natives project has supported these findings - the overwhelming majority of teens are very aware of sexual predator concerns and are incredibly savvy at navigating the internet and avoiding contact with creepy strangers. In fact, most youth we spoke with largely avoid online contact with anyone they don’t know personally.
The risks associated with teens socializing online were further highlighted by Davina, a high school student interviewed who took part in a lunchroom fight that ended in chair-throwing and a video that proceeded to earn her YouTube fame. Davina is now legitimately concerned that this video – and her behavior - is now permanently available for all to see - including college admissions officers. While kids socialize in online spaces they often feel are out of the realm of adults, college admission officers and prospective employers are trolling sites like MySpace and Facebook, searching for evidence of illegal or unsavory hijinks to deny offers of admission or employment. A media blitz last spring highlighting stories of employers discriminating against college grads based on unsavory Facebook photos and police officers searching for evidence of underage drinking on MySpace, appears to have affected youth behavior, to a degree. We have found that youth, particularly those attending more elite high schools and universities, are increasingly becoming wise to these issues. They are taking charge of their social networking sites’ privacy settings, or removing all together those frat-party videos that seemed so funny last Saturday night. A serious issue is the inequality of awareness we have found among the students we talked to - in more affluent schools, college counselors and teachers are adamantly warning students from the start to be careful what they post online, while students from lower performing schools were more likely to hear the warnings from after-school programs they were involved with, or else, wait for the warnings to be passed down from friends.
One issue of a life online which was completely ignored by Frontline is the digital dossier: the accumulation of personal data collected as people use digital technology. In focusing the program so heavily on social networking sites, it is surprising that there was no discussion of the repercussions of the availability and permanence of online personal data - not to sexual predators or college counselors, but in mass form, to service providers and marketers. As teens socialize online they share photos, videos, blog posts and personal musings – all of this content is hosted by sites that wield enormous power over what they do with these data, and who they share them with. As children grow up online - starting with NeoPets at 4, to MySpace at 14, to Facebook at 24 – they document everything, and leave this documentation in the hands of companies that have profit, rather than kids’ best interest, at heart. For example, Facebook collects information about users and then reserves the right to share all the amassed information with third parties. When signed in to email or blogger, Google is keeping tabs on every search the user conducts. In twenty years, marketers may know a six-year-old’s interests and habits better than he knows them himself.
Our research has shown that while many young people are disinterested about data collection issues, they are also largely unaware of what is being collected, how it is being used, and what the repercussions may be. Some who are more aware, cite the inevitability of compromising their privacy if they are going to engage in the social world, which, for the 12-24 age group, has migrated online. As one student we talked to - a particularly thoughtful high school senior - said “… anyone can have access to your stuff. [..] do you accept that because you participate in using internet and technology like that or is there a way to fight that and create ways in which you can keep stuff private and keep stuff yours? [..] People Google everything because they just think to. They don’t know where this information goes. They don’t know that [..] when you log on to certain sites [..] they keep track of [..] when you log on and what you write. [..] It’s the fact that people don’t know. ..There’s not enough transparency for young people to know and they participate very unknowledgeably. That’s what scares me because you don’t know what that will end up looking at later on.” Perhaps rather than focusing efforts on bills like DOPA that limit access to social sites in response to sexual predator fear, congress should focus on protecting the mass amounts of information service providers like MySpace and Facebook amass from the millions of young people that live their lives on these sites.
In spite of the current lack of attention among US lawmakers to these concerns, issues of privacy stemming from the use of new technologies are becoming increasingly relevant not only for digital natives, but for all citizens living online. In Europe, stricter privacy laws are bringing more attention to these issues: the Council of Europe has organized the second annual “Data Protection Day” (January 28, 2008) marked by campaigns to raise awareness amongst middle school and high school students about how and why personal information is collected, and what is done with these data. As part of this initiative, the transatlantic privacy perspective will be discussed at Duke University Center for European Studies. Education about issues of privacy must be extended beyond fears of sexual predators and trolling college admission officers or potential employers. The reality and implications of the widespread and largely unregulated collection and dissemination of private data must be taught to youth that spend so much time living and sharing online. In order to be successful, this is an effort which must be undertaken by the many stakeholders involved – parents, schools, young people themselves, and policy makers. It is not only necessary to reform current laws in order to make service providers act responsibly in the collection and sharing of user data, but also to help young people understand the online world they inhabit, so that they may engage in knowledgeable and critical ways.
- Corinna di Gennaro & Miriam Simun
MacArthur/MIT Press Series on Youth, Media, and Learning January 10, 2008
Posted by jesse in : digital civic engagement, participation gap, digital innovation, digital opportunities, digital safety, digital privacy, digital identity, digital creativity, digital learning, Uncategorized , 1 comment so far(Cross posted from Dr. Palfrey’s blog.
Last month, the MacArthur Foundation, along with MIT Press, announced the release of a series of new books on youth and new media. The series is a treasure trove.
I have been working my way through the six books over the past several weeks as I’m simultaneously working on late drafts of the book that Urs Gasser and I are writing on a similar topic, called Born Digital (forthcoming, Basic Books, 2008).
I’d highly recommend to anyone remotely interested in the topic to read these books. They are academic in style, structure and language, but remarkably accessible in my view. I’m not a social scientist, nor an expert in most of the fields that are represented by the authors (in fact, I’m not sure if there are any lawyers at all in the list of authors!), but the editors and authors have done a lovely job of making their fields relevant broadly.
For starters, the series Foreword, by the group of “series advisors,” is wonderful. I can’t imagine how six people came to agree on such a clear text, but somehow they did. There must have been a lead author who held onto the pen; it’s far too coherent to have been written by committee. (The advisors are: Mizuko Ito, Cathy Davidson, Henry Jenkins, Carol Lee, Michael Eisenberg, and Joanne Weiss. One imagines that the voice of the program officer at the MacArthur Foundation who made it all possible, Connie Yowell, is in there somewhere too.)
The Foreword is worth reading in full, but a few key lines: “Unlike the early years in the development of computers and computer-based media, digital media are now commonplace and pervasive, having been taken up by a wide range of individuals and institutions in all walks of life. Digital Media have escaped the boundaries of professional and formal practice, and the academic, governmental, and industry homes that initially fostered their development.” Those are simple statements, clear and right on. One of the reasons to pay attention to this topic right now is the pervasiveness, the commonplace-ness of the use of these new media, especially by many young people.
Also, their working hypothesis: “those immersed in new digital tools and networks are engaged in an unprecedented exploration of language, games, social interaction, problem solving, and self-directed activity that leads to diverse forms of learning. These diverse forms of learning are reflected in expressions of identity, how individuals express independence and creativity, and in their ability to learn, exercise judgment, and think systematically.” The work of the series authors, I think, bears out this hypothesis quite convincingly.
At the same time, the series advisors make plain that they are not “uncritical of youth practices” and note that they do not claim “that digital media necessarily hold the key to empowerment.” It is this spirit of healthy skepticism that one can hear through most of the essays in the series — and which is essential to the academic enterprise they’ve undertaken.
So far, I’ve finished the book on “Youth, Identity, and Digital Media” (ed. by David Buckingham) and “The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning” (ed. by Katie Salen) and am part of the way through each of the others. Each one is excellent.
In the ID book, I found particularly helpful the first piece on “Introducing Identity” by David Buckingham, which took on the hard definitional and discipline-related questions of identity in this context. He put a huge amount of scholarship into context, with sharp critiques along the way. The essay by our colleague danah boyd (on “Why Youth (heart) Social Network Sites,” a variant of which is online) is already a key document in our understanding of identity and the shifts in conceptions of public and private (”privacy in public,” and the idea of the networked public — related to but not the same as Yochai Benkler’s similar notions of networked publics). And the notion of “Identity Production as Bricolage” — introduced in “Imaging, Keyboarding, and Posting Identities” by Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell — is evocative and helpful, I thought. The many warnings about not “exociticizing” (danah often using the word “fetishizing”) the norms and habits of young people and their use of technology, as well as echoes of Henry Jenkins’ work on convergence and his and Eszter Hargittai’s study of the participation gap came through load and clear, too. (I am pretty sure I can hear dislike of the term “digital natives” in between certain lines, as well.)
There’s much more to like in the book, and much more to work into our own understanding of ID in this environment, than I can post here. There’s an equal amount of insight in the Games book too. (The class I am co-teaching with David Hornik starts in 31 minutes and I should probably prepare a bit more than I have already.)
Text Messaging and Public Graffiti January 2, 2008
Posted by aapino in : digital civic engagement, digital privacy, digital creativity, digital information overload, digital identity , add a commentThere was a great article in the Boston Globe yesterday about two Boston area companies, Aerva Inc. and LocaModa Inc., that are pioneering so-called “public graffiti spaces.” In essence, they are connected displays that show content submitted via text messages. It is also broadcast online so that others can tune in to a given location and even submit content themselves. As “out-of-home” displays become more popular, I’d like to discuss the current and future applications of this idea, as well as the implications it holds for digital identity and privacy.
LocaModa Inc., which provides a service called Wiffiti (short for wireless graffiti) views interactive out-of-home displays as the answer to consumers’ “insatiable desire for connectedness” and the shift from a “’lean back’ TV experience to a more active ‘lean forward’” one. Traditional narrowcast displays, like those found in Wal-Mart or other retail stores, have been vehicles for open loop advertisements that do not respond to users or incorporate user-generated content. Wiffiti works by having a display in a public place, like a café or club, to which users can send text messages that will be immediately displayed on screen. A particular establishment can extend the effectiveness of the device by prompting the audience to, say, submit music requests, vote on their favorite bartender, or answer trivia questions. The model for this is shown below:
Marketers love this idea and view it as the new way to connect with potential customers. The Economist reports that Proctor & Gamble ran a promotion inviting women to text “secrets” to giant screen in Times Square that would also be broadcast on the secret.com website. (A representative message confessed, “I cut my sister’s hair when she was younger and told my parents that she did it herself.”) Executives at the company praised the promotion for dramatically increasing brand awareness.
Public text messaging appeals not only to the need for connectedness that some of us have, but also to marketers and the owners of a venue because of the inherent data collection ability. A user’s cell phone number acts as a unique identifier (like a cookie on a website) that can track the screens to which someone submits, what they actually said, and could possibly be combined with other databases of personal information. Of course, the availability of those other databases depends on the data sharing policies of companies with which one engages in business. Unfortunately, most people never read the fine print when they sign up for rewards cards at retail stores or other promotions. If the store has a lax data sharing policy and collected your cell phone number when you signed up, then the club or café across town might be able to associate you with previous purchases and be able to target advertisements, offers, or anything else in your direction.
But advertising companies are treading carefully; the trust of a consumer is of extremely high value and firms are anxious to preserve that. The founder of LocaModa notes that “the future of out-of-home screen media is unlikely to follow [an] Orwellian model.”
An important question about this technology is whether or not it helps the social nature of the location. Some would say that the last thing we need is another excuse to pull out a cell phone in a café or club. In my own experience, it is common for digital natives to be in a social, public space and message friends that aren’t present. During the time it takes to communicate, the DN displaces him or herself from the environment they are in. They are temporarily closer to the recipient of the message, miles away, than other people just a few feet apart from them. (For more on this, see Sherry Turkle’s excellent piece, Always-on/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self.) Proponents of social graffiti spaces say this is just the opposite; it is immersive in the way it connects an individual to the people in the same space.
What do you think about social texting? Would you engage in it at a café or club? Do you think it helps or hurts the real life social relations between people?
- Tony P.
