The Future of Reputation: when poop goes primetime

This post is more questions than answers or opinions, so please bear with the incessant questions. I'm usually not like this. So let me start this off with a question: Remember the Dog Poop Girl from South Korea? Like in her case, there have been several cases where people have become vigilantes/voyeurs online.

On Facebook, 'I keep an eye' on my friends, update my status so they can do the same with me. Like danah boyd said (with regard to social networking sites), “Many began participating (in social networking sites) because of the available social voyeurism and the opportunity to craft a personal representation in an increasingly popular online community.” In that case, how much privacy can you have online? Are people deliberately taking social interactions between friends to the public sphere for others to witness? Like in the offline world, are people judged with regard to their online associations; a group identity that is 'reinforced by the collective tastes and attitudes of those in the group?' Then, to what extent does privacy play a part in reputation?

Most people feel that the current laws regarding privacy are not adequate to protect people’s reputations. Daniel J Solove's book, The Future of Reputation, takes this issue further and talks about how the Internet is changing the publishing industry. And this time, it’s not just celebrities – blogs’ egalitarian nature ensures that it’s everybody. It’s taking our reputations and private lives online, making it hard to understand the legal issues of privacy.

Like the dog poop girl's story, information spreads like a wildfire on the Internet. And many times, it affects peoples reputation and privacy. In the offline world, the law would come into effect; but online law has its shortcomings in protecting people. Like the media has its own rules, media such as blogs and social networking sites do not have any modes of censorship in most countries.

Just because something is available on the Interenet, does not necessarily mean it is public in theory; and just because something is not does not mean it is private. If someone is having a private conversation in a public place, does that automatically give you the right to be a part of that conversation just because you happen to be there?

User-created content like wikis and blogs create a conflict with regard to the freedom of speech. Like people establish norms, can they also police what people do/write online? The fact that there are defamation law suits based on blogs, is testimony to the fact that privacy and reputation is something that needs to be looked at. Can the rules and freedom of the press also apply to the Internet?

I wonder as we get further into the digital age if there’s going to be any repercussions for not participating in the online cultures. What happens if employers or schools search for your profile and don’t find one? Can that say something negatively about who you are? Instead of searching to find out the negatives can’t the profiles be used as a positive (the potential employee is social and has friends).

I was commenting on a friends blog when this showed up:

The picture is my profile picture on Facebook. This was when I was reading someones blog - for the first time! Remember those annoying IQ test ads? When it was celebrities, I didn't care much. But when they pull up a random picture of me and challenge others to an IQ test, I don't take very kindly to that.

So I guess my question really is: What is private and why it should be? If nothing is black and white; and we live in the gray, the question really is: can there be a gray online? And is getting peoples personal information from whats available ethical?

Open Source

On his website, Josh Reisner writes why he thinks ‘Open Source Rules.’

Just to follow up on my earlier debacle/discovery with PostCommitWebHooks, an Italian PHP coder seems to have picked up the script I posted to the Google thread and added to it considerably!

The script I wrote listens for updates from Google's server and maintains a record of those updates. This coder's script takes those updates and gets the actual changed files and maintains a local copy.

I can already think of a nice way to extend his update: write a script that presents that local cache of files as a single ZIP you can download. I suppose the reason they don't offer that is because they want you to connect over SVN. But I think a lot of people might want to use the code but don't want to bother checking it out, at least at first.

Anyway, moral of the story: open source is great.

I Agree. Like Reisner, many coders write scripts/codes to help improve the Internet experience. Now, it is not just browsers, but also Operating Systems like Linux, games and applications for technology like the iPhone that are Open Source. In the case of Firefox, several coders helped make it a bastion of Web browsers. From the time Internet Explorer took over much of the market share, to what it is now, Microsoft has nothing to blame but its laid-back approach and the many open source coders.

In a blog post, I had said that Wikipedia works because it is a labor of love. And I guess what makes Open Source work, is that it is also a labor of love. Although both have very socialistic concepts backing them, they are both democratic in nature – being run by, for and of the people. With the many nicknamed, faceless, characters that make this concept work, multinational corporations like Microsoft have had to take notice and improve themselves.

I wonder if there will be a time when we don’t have to buy software.

The Era of Sentient Things

So writing this post was a tough one: What to write about? Smart stuff or the ubiquitous iPod (something I still don't own)? I decided to go with the smart stuff. ‘Smart’ phones, ‘smart’ shoes, ‘smart’ swimwear, ‘smart’ t-shirts. Yes, I get the message. It is Rheingold’s ‘Era Of Sentient Things’ and the computer is not the only ‘smart’ thing in the market.

What got me thinking, apart from this weeks reading, was the ability of these so-called ‘smart’ chips that track your every move. But who’s watching? The Patriot Act has caused a lot of furor. Once such technology enters everyday life, what’s next? Will we start shopping for chip-less things like we do organic food? Will there be a separation of the two?

Will these chips talk to each other like Rheingold prophecied? Technology has grown exponentially from 2002; are the prophecies coming true or is it just the hippie-era-Uncle-Sam-is-watching paranoia that’s gripping me now? What worries me is that it’s not just Uncle Sam anymore; it’s other people like me who own ‘chipped’ things. Who owns access to your devices, either to push information at you or extract information from you? Remember how bluetooth technology on cellphones scared us in the beginning?

I also read Sherry Turkle’s book, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, last semester, which got me thinking on Artificial Intelligence (AI). I’m still skeptical of interacting with cyborgs because I’m not convinced that digital or computerized communication can fulfill all my needs of human interaction and human communication. While I don’t want to say that people should stop creating and experimenting with new technologies, I also don’t want a society where everything is done through computers, phone or wearable computers. I still hold on to bits of offline and non-digital communication and I think it is important to have and continue to use.

Where is the a-cellular organism?

When I bought my phone a couple of months ago, I looked for something that would have the most features for the budget I had. This is not to say that I use all of them, but most features were about connecting with other people who are either beside you (bluetooth, infrared, anyone?) or away. Does this say anything about socializing trends via cell phones?

Apparently, it does! For some reason, the mobile phone seemingly encourages people to have the most remarkable conversations in public spaces! It provides us with a way to forget the boredom of a bus ride or a wait in a doctor's waiting room and instead interact with our best friend who is miles away.

This calls to mind advice from Miss Manners on cellphone etiquette. She said that cellphone use, when it does not disrupt the goings-on in one's immediate vicinity, may still be an etiquette breach - against the distant party being spoken to, who may be annoyed by a call whose entire message is "I'm standing in a line." Thus the caller is relieving his or her own boredom by inflicting it on someone else. And its not just the receiver of the call. What Miss Manners seems to have left out, is that the people around the caller and the receiver are also 'forced' or in many cases, very willingly, have to listen to the conversation. While on the bus the other day, I was privy to the most uncomfortable conversations - a married couple fighting. How do I know? Because the lady was saying, and very loudly, that he needs to stand up to his mother one of these days or she would leave him! I was going through class readings and found it very hard to concentrate.

With such technology, it is becoming increasingly hard to differentiate between public and private spaces. Like Richard Ling said in his book New Tech, New Ties, the mobile phone strengthens social bonds among family and friends. If this is the case, I wonder what happened to the lady and her husband?

The Communications Revolution

By having full, easy access to the telephone, the television and the Internet, many of us end up taking for granted the process it took for these telecommunications technologies to evolve.

It is crazy to imagine that, in 1956, when the first transatlantic telephone cable went on-line, only 89 simultaneous conversations could take place between Europe and North America. According to Frances Cairncross, "international and long-distance call rates have been falling, changing our mental map of the world," and, thanks to that, I can communicate via phone with my parents and friends back in Brazil on a daily basis. It is incredibly cheap. And, although the telephone does and cannot substitute a hug, it does bring us closer despite the distance. So I do agree with Cairncross when she says that "[d]istance will no longer determine the cost of communicating electronically" -- or the so-called "death of distance."

When I was about 8 years old, in 1992 or so, I remember it was very expensive for the Brazilian population to get a landline phone. Not everyone had one. People would even have telephone shares in the stock market, which completely disappeared only a few years later, when telephones became much cheaper and affordable (and the shares had no longer value). When my grandma passed away, in 1995, my mom inherited a landline from her, which I recall being worth a good amount of money. The same wouldn't apply today.

The discussion about mobile phones also called my attention as I read the text. "For conversations, people will come to use mobile phones almost exclusively," Cairncross says. As we can see below in the Associated Press video (from May 2008), this is apparently what is happening here in the U.S.



But until today, cell phone minute rates are pretty expensive in Brazil. Obviously, it's not as expensive as it was five years ago and it's much more accessible to everyone, but people will use their landline phones for longer conversations (even local) and long-distance and international calls. This clearly doesn't apply to the U.S., where in most cases long-distance rates cost as much as local rates. That is why, I believe, most families still have landline phones in Brazil.

On a side but related note, Cairncross says that "[a]lready [the Internet] carries telephone and video conferences as well as live television and radio broadcasts." In one of my classes, we started learning about Podcasting, which sparkled my interested in it. Today, I subscribed to a couple of them and was amazed at the sound quality and all the information we can get through free podcasts, which can be subscribed to and downloaded automatically when new content is added. However, podcasts are still evolving. People are still getting used to this new tool and source of information. But that made me think whether the radio as we have seen it over the years will continue to exist or become obsolete, just like landline phones are starting to.

"Watching its evolution, we can catch a glimpse of what lies ahead."

Roots of Revolution provides a nice foundation for our class and the impact technology has made on society. I read it with wide eyes and great understanding, but there was one line that really stuck with me, "watching its evolution, we can catch a glimpse of what lies ahead." To me, this last sentence completely encompasses the role of the Internet in our lives.

When you think about it, the Internet has been a guiding light into the future. Its progression matches the advancements in our lifestyles. Throughout the years we have come to know more conveniences, and spend less time enjoying one activity at a time. We have transformed into multitasking, "computer chip" oriented people with faster and faster calculations per second.

This relates back to the previous three articles. With faster Internet connections approaching, we are less likely to keep our concentration to one mode of communication. It is rare to find someone completing one task at a time from start to finish without the interruption of another technology.

My fear is that as the Internet becomes more faceted, humans will overload themselves. The revolution continues and will for some time. I just don't want people to lose touch with "real" communication, and get lost in the computer screen.

Phones, and TVs and Computers... Oh my!

This chapter of the book served as a great introduction, an overview of the roots of technology and a glimpse into its future.

For many of our generation, the babies of the 80’s, the idea of being away from communication for more than the duration of a plane ride is a whimsical idea.

In the Trendspotter’s Guide to New Communications I became shocked by the reality of many of the predictions: daily we see improved connections, increased mobility, the inversion of home and office, loss of privacy and rebirth of cities (I see this in Houston!)… just to name a few.

I continued reading in 1-2 and stumbled upon a particularly interesting part saying “ because technology defines the limits on what a society can do, technological innovation might be expected to be a major impetus to social change…” (13). I see the ramifications of this in our changing and developing techo-world today. Our society is able to peace talk over nations, have families communicate clearly and doctors can discuss medical strategies at the moment advice is needed.