Grant Morrison: Google Glass is 'half-fish, half-man
- Q: With superhero technology, things like wearable Internet-connected devices like Google Glass, becoming real, is there a place in the future for superhero stories?
- Morrison: This is why we love superheroes. They're a version of our future that's not food for zombies. There's a lot of vectors for technology. Medical technology, prosthetics, is making us superhuman. And computer memory chips are making us smarter, remembering what we can't.
- Q: How does the Internet fit in?
- Morrison: The big superhuman leap is in the communications technology. If you've looked at the phone like it's an organism. First it fits in your hand, then your ear, then your eye, and then the back of your head. Skynet's about to become self-aware, but it's not going to nuke us, it's going to f*** us.
- Q: So is something like Google Glass important?
- Morrison: Glass is an intermediary stage. It's half-fish, half-man. Like the Victorian malodorous super-accordion, it bridges the gap.
- Q: If that's the case, what will it mean to live in a world where we're all super-connected superhumans?
- Morrison: When you're connected to everyone and everything, it'll be the end of privacy, of the dual self. It'll be like a snowflake, and the snowfall is more important than the flake. Everybody will have seen your naked pictures, and nobody will care. There's no terror at all, it'll just be the way things are. It'll change the way that people will look at themselves as an organism, a human organism.
“We consumers have no choice in the matter. All the major companies that provide us with Internet services are interested in tracking us. Visit a website and it will almost certainly know who you are; there are lots of ways to be tracked without cookies. Cellphone companies routinely undo the web's privacy protection. One experiment at Carnegie Mellon took real-time videos of students on campus and was able to identify one-third of them by comparing their photos with publicly available tagged Facebook photos. Maintaining privacy on the Internet is nearly impossible. If you forget even once to enable your protections, or click on the wrong link, or type the wrong thing, and you've permanently attached your name to whatever anonymous service you're using. Monsegur slipped up once, and the FBI got him. If the director of the CIA can't maintain his privacy on the Internet, we've got no hope.”
—http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/16/opinion/schneier-internet-surveillance/index.html“Glass is Google’s unintentional public service announcement on the future of privacy. Our traditional bogeyman for privacy was Big Brother and its physical manifestation — closed-circuit TV — but the reality today is closer to what I call Little Sister, and she is socially active, curious, sufficiently tech-savvy, growing up in the land of “free,” getting on with life and creating a digital exhaust that is there for the taking. The sustained conversation around Glass will be sufficient to lead to a societal shift in how we think about the ownership of data, and to extrapolate a bit, the kind of cities we want to live in. For me, the argument that Glass is somehow inherently nefarious misses a more interesting point: It is a physical and obvious manifestation of things that already exist and are widely deployed today, whose lack of physical, obvious presence has limited a mainstream critical discourse. As a product that is both on-your-face and in-your-face, Glass is set to become a lightning rod for a wider discussion around what constitutes acceptable behavior in public and private spaces. ”
—http://allthingsd.com/20130412/you-lookin-at-me-reflections-on-google-glass/
0. Spackeriade – I'll Be Back For More Datalove!
There can be no reasonable discussion about data privacy without also talking about post privacy. For several reasons however there was no place for that at the 28C3, so I fled the Congress on the third day and went to the 0. Spackeriade, a meeting point for people interested in discussing freedom of information and the loss of control over our own data.
I didn’t have time to listen to every talk, but I visited or watched several online:
- Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust… Plädoyer für die Einheit des politischen und des privaten Ichs
- Dabei sein ist nicht alles: Ein paar Leute kamen ins Fernsehen und machten nichts draus. Zehn Thesen zur Spackeria
- Alles offen, alles gut? Wie gefährlich Kontrollverlust und Post-Privacy wirklich sind
- Kampf für die Informationsfreiheit ist ein sozialer Kampf
(picture by naturalismus, cc-by-sa)
I can highly recommend all of them, especially if you’re not too familiar with the discussed issues, the talks are quite beginner-friendly. Sadly, I missed the talk Fickileaks - Post Privacy X-Treme (who doesn’t like a lecture on sex, polygamy and polyamory?), which, in addition, is still not available online due to camera problems (that can’t be a coincidence!).
One thing I have to highlight is the very positive atmosphere. I had the impression that everyone was accepted, questions and new approaches were welcome. I don’t agree with every thesis stated by the Spackeria by far, but there was always a possibility for discussion and objections were appreciated every time.
After the Spackeriade however some incidents were pointed out to me:
- https://twitter.com/#!/Fotografiona/status/152785617577713664
- https://twitter.com/#!/Fotografiona/status/152786236422103040
- https://twitter.com/#!/Fotografiona/status/152786907384913922
I didn’t witness them myself but they should be mentioned, nonetheless.
My only personal objection is that the level of the talks did not always fit the audience. I had the impression that some talks covered many of the basics, while most of the audience were already further ahead, having read and discussed on the topic before. On the other hand, the talks didn’t leave anyone behind who was just starting to delve into the details of post privacy.
I definitely will be there next time (if the 2012 apocalypse doesn’t get in my way).
“Nicht Technologie definiert unseren Umgang mit der eigenen und Privatsphäre Dritter, sondern unsere Gesellschaft.”
—Die Privatsphäre ist tot - lang lebe die Privatsphäre
Da trifft sich das eine Idealdenken auf das auf der anderen Seite. Wie sehr Technik unserem Ideal und unserer Wahrnehmung überlegen ist, visualisiert besonders krass friendmatrix (bitte denkt 3x darüber nach, bevor ihr dieser App Zugriff auf die Daten gebt!!).
Letztenendes wird das Ergebnis irgendwo zwischen Technologie und gesellschaftlicher Ausrichtung liegen.
Maulkorbgespräche
Wenn ich Menschen zu mir nach Hause einlade, möchte ich, dass sie unbeschwert sagen, was sie denken. Ich möchte nicht, dass sie sich einen Maulkorb anlegen und jedes Wort abwägen aus Sorge, irgendeiner der anderen Anwesenden könnte am nächsten Tag in die Halböffentlichkeit von Facebook stellen, was sie gesagt haben, ob nun anonymisiert oder nicht. Auch wenn es politisch nicht korrekt war, vielleicht doof, unbedacht dahingesagt, oder eine Haltung ausdrückte, die ein anderer verdammenswert fand. Ich möchte, dass sie bei mir zu Hause darauf vertrauen können, nicht am nächsten Tag von einem meiner anderen Gäste im Internet lächerlich gemacht und darüber hinaus von Kommentatoren, mit denen sie nie ein Wort gesprochen haben, verspottet zu werden. Ob sie selbst das alles nun mitbekommen oder nicht: Mir tut es weh. Sie waren meine Gäste. Ich habe ihnen mit meiner Wohnung einen Schutzraum zur Verfügung gestellt und muss nun lesen, dass einer, der ebenfalls eingeladen war, sie für ein paar Likes Gleichgesinnter an den Pranger stellt, weil er findet, dass sie etwas Anzuprangerndes gesagt hätten.
Soll ich mir sagen: Ach komm, ist doch alles nicht so dramatisch? Der Verspottete hat es ja gar nicht mitbekommen. Dann müsste ich in Zukunft Warnungen an meine Gäste aussprechen: “Sagt heute Abend nichts, was ihr nicht morgen auch auf Facebook lesen wollt.” Oder: “Sagt in XYs Gegenwart nichts, was seine Facebook-Freunde nicht morgen kommentieren sollen.” Nötig wäre es, denn manche meiner Freunde sind schon etwas älter und wissen nicht, dass andere in einem Reich namens post privacy leben.
Aber das wäre absurd. Wir hätten nur noch Maulkorbgespräche.
Und es würde ein anderes Problem nicht lösen: Muss ich nicht damit rechnen, dass der Betreffende irgendetwas auf Facebook stellt und von anderen verurteilen lässt, was ich zu ihm sage? Ich müsste nun also immer, wenn ich mit ihm kommuniziere, jedes Wort genau abwägen. Ich müsste mir einen Maulkorb anlegen.
Auch das kann keine Lösung sein. Was also ist die richtige Lösung? Ich weiß es nicht. In den ersten Momenten fand ich, ich müsste eine radikale Konsequenz ziehen: die reale und die virtuelle Freundschaft beenden. Jetzt bin ich mir da nicht mehr so sicher. Aber ich weiß: Es war richtig und wichtig, darüber einen wütenden kleinen Post zu schreiben und für den einzutreten, der zum Gespött gemacht wurde, ohne es zu wissen (zum Glück).
Warum ich das an dieser Stelle getan habe? Weil die Gäste eingeladen waren, um mit mir die Veröffentlichung von “Der kalte Traum” zu feiern.
"I believe in a better life through data"
zeit.deTechnologie ist manchmal wie eine leistungssteigernde Droge: Man muss bereits sehr gut sein. Technik kann nur dabei helfen, die entscheidenden fünf oder zehn Prozent besser zu werden. Und wenn dich keiner mag, kann auch die beste Technik deine Popularitätswerte nicht wesentlich steigern.
Harper Reed.
Die Zeit Online (in German).
Argument against Christian Heller's rerefence to the gay movement in support of post privacy
“Premises:
1. We live in a culture of fear
2. The attention economy provides fertile ground for the culture of fear
3. Social media is magnifying the attention economy”
“Radical transparency presumes that outing people will combat fear and increase tolerance. But does it? Are marginalised people better off as a group when they are exposed? I genuinely don’t know the answer to this. But my hunch is that things aren’t working out the way it was intended.
Many gay activists look to the past 50 years and argue that LGBT acceptance continues to increase alongside the rise of highly visible LGBT-identified people. But historian George Chauncey is quick to highlight that gay culture pre-WWII was much more vibrant and open than what was available in the 1970s, the supposed liberating years for the gay community. In fact, the fears that rose after prohibition are what drove the oppression of gay society. In Germany, the 1920s were an extraordinarily gay time. In all senses of the word. Fear crushed that. “To use the modern idiom,” Chauncey writes, “the state built a closet in the 1930s and forced gay people to hide in it.” What happened?
Social forces are not linear. There’s no universal narrative of “progress” where we continue to march forward to ever-increasing levels of enlightenment. There are even radically divergent ideas of what constitutes progress and enlightenment in the first place.
Tolerance is a value that I am completely committed to. But it is often espoused as though it is neutral. It is not. The fact is that people tolerate certain things and not others – and this tolerance changes depending on who they’re with, what the issues are, what the risks are of being tolerant. Our decisions about what is acceptable to tolerate stem from our values and our beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. There are certainly people who embrace difference when they’re exposed to it, but there are also people who fear it.
Exposure to new people doesn’t automatically produce tolerance. When explorers traversed the earth looking for opportunity, they pillaged and plundered even before they began colonising. Fear ruled the seas. And let’s be honest, exposure to other people during great explorations did not magically produce tolerance. It bred anger, distrust and hatred.
Through networked technologies, the average person is exposed to more things today than ever before in history. People can get a window into the lives of others halfway around the world. Onlookers may not understand what strangers are saying nor may they be sharing that much publicly, but the internet enables more access to more people than even the greatest explorers in history ever had. But what does someone make of this opportunity? Are people really looking around to understand difference? Or are they more committed to finding similarity and avoiding people who aren’t like them?
The internet makes visible things that we want to see, but it also makes visible things that we don’t want to see. It exposes us to people who are different. And this is the source of a great amount of fear.”
full article by Danah Boyd: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/21/digital-era-society-social-media
Out of SHEER curiosity;
Earlier on my Tumblr… lol
when you make the thing say “private” instead of “publish now” up there, can you say who can see it, or is it just you.
続きを読む… →
