I have always been paranoid keeping my different online identities separate. It has been a while since I found it easy enough to put up several google searches and get a pretty complete profile of a person, if he or she does have an active online identity. It is not to say I think keeping a clear online identity is a bad thing. On one hand it is inevitable to maintain an active and valid identity either for clearer public recognition or promotion, just like in real life, on the other hand it is also a safer approach to have separate identity and sometimes anonymity for different online tasks, especially under circumstances where online surveillance and censorships happen a lot. However with any currently available web browser and the current way most modern websites are built, to keep a clear separation of different identities is extremely difficult and effortful. Using same username or email address leaves a clear and accurate trail of one’s online activities.
There are several different approaches out there trying to either simplify or solve the identity mess online, such as OpenID protocol, integrated user profile management in web browsers and also ongoing research on privacy models that could apply to computer programs for them to classify private information. Yet in reality there is always a balance between security and usability, and at this point most of the approaches are still geek toys that require a more advanced/simplified interface to gain wider acceptance. My personal take is just to use different browser for separate profile settings, more or less a hack on the loose cookie systems.
Nevertheless, even those approaches all successfully get to general acceptance and accomplish their goals, a wider exposure of private information remains unchanged and I do not have any problem with that. You get better control on the information online, but they are still (and should be) trackable.
One concern I really have regarding this trend, along with the very slow semantic web movement, is that while the internet is getting better and better understanding of human activity and the collective intelligence would actually gain consciousness of its own presence. I am seeing this issue not as science fiction but a practical matter and would like to see while surrendering too much information about themselves how would human beings deal with the intellectual machine(s). That would be a too broad future to predict so that I would like to start my research from how would the transition start, before this really big change actually happens.
Thesis Abstract
We are producing much more information online than ever. Ubiquitous computing is practical enough to blend the borderline between physical world and the internet. The revolution of user interface is around the corner, much more user-friendly screen-based and tangible interfaces encourage people to get connected. Whatever interface they are collected through, the data are not going nowhere. All information are stored together with trails enough to reveal people’s identity. Furthermore, the moment they are public on the internet, even just for a short period of time, they get replicated by crawlers from all kinds of search engines, aggregators and other software agents. Information could be removed from their original source, but practically they will be public on the internet, however difficult to reveal, for good. Another category of information are less publicized yet as important is the transactional data created through people’s interaction, most service providers keep these information which could be extremely valuable for marketing purposes. These information, due to the channels they are collected through, are usually much more sensitive and much easier to leak identity.
Corporates and service providers normally provide unilateral privacy policies that keep highly sensitive data out of public accessibility, organizations such as Electronic Privacy Information Center are also working hard to drive digital privacy protection through legitimate methods, technically there is still very little effective ways to prevent private information from getting into public attention, given the surprising pace how computing technology evolves. I would like to look at this problem under a slightly broader presumption that eventually much more of our personal information would reach the public, and we would have to adapt the new situation where we have to redefine what “privacy” really is.
The final product of this project would be an interactive software/installation or animation that drives awareness of this social change on privacy. At this point I am not exactly sure about the presentation of the project, but preferably I would be able to foresee the new situation and how the transition is going to happen, therefore create a convincible narrative on this topic. I would like to define the new boundary of privacy by a) studying what categories of information the majority of current online service providers are collecting, b) examining behavioral changes those services cause on people’s daily life and whether those changes are temporal or permanent, and c) creating a practical scenario in which there maintains a new balance after people are used to publicizing information that they considered private before.
Post a Comment