Quick chime in here to your last paragraph Doc. We are nearing the completion to expanding the Kantara Initiative Consent Receipt global spec to Information Sharing Interoperability <https://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/WGISI>, where several important projects will begin and continue to be developed. These important global specs directed at information sharing along with the other Kantara WG listed https://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/ <https://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/> like UMA only make us a strong force in changing both the behavior of individuals and business to be better actors on the “Net"
> On Nov 11, 2019, at 1:05 PM, Doc Searls <[email protected]> wrote: > > Thanks, Yosem. Good one. > > At the book's Amazon page > <https://www.amazon.com/How-Became-Our-Data-Informational/dp/022662658X/>, do > the "look inside" thing and go to the chapter titled "Redesign: Data's > Turbulent Pasts and Future Paths" (p. 173) and read forward through the two > pages it allows. In that chapter, Koopman begins to develop "the argument > that information politics is separate from communicative politics." We might > note that his frame (what he earlier calls "embankments") is politics. > > Now take three minutes for A Smart Home Neighborhood: Residents Find It > Enjoyably Convenient Or A Bit Creepy > <https://www.npr.org/2019/11/09/777747209/a-smart-home-neighborhood-residents-find-it-enjoyably-convenient-or-a-bit-creepy>, > which ran on NPR this morning. It's about a neighborhood of Amazon "smart > homes" in a Seattle suburb. Both the homes and the neighborhood are full of > convenience, absent of privacy, and reliant on surveillance—both by Amazon > and residents. A guy with the investment arm of the National Association of > Realtors says, "There's a new narrative when it comes to what a home means." > The reporter enlarges on this: "It means a personalized environment where > technology responds to your every need. Maybe it means giving up some > privacy. These families are trying out that compromise." In one case the > teenage daughter relies on Amazon as her "butler," while her mother walks > home on the side of the street without Amazon doorbells, which have cameras > and microphones. > > Two more pieces. > > First, About face <https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2019/10/31/about-face/>, a > blog post where I visit the issue of facial recognition by computers. Like > the smart home, facial recognition is a technology that's useful both for > powerful forces outside of ourselves, and by ourselves. And, to limit the > former, we need to rely on the former. That's a political quandary that > verges on impossibility, which is why looking for a policy solution may be a > waste of energy and time. > > Second, What does the Internet make of us > <https://medium.com/@dsearls/what-does-the-internet-make-of-us-118421ac5e>, > which I conclude with this: > > My wife likens the experience of being “on” the Internet to one of > weightlessness. Because the Internet is not a thing, and has no gravity. > There’s no “there” there. In adjusting to this, our species has around two > decades of experience so far, and only about one decade of doing it on > smartphones, most of which we will have replaced two years from now. (Some > because the new ones will do 5G, which looks > <https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linuxs-broadening-foundation> to be yet > another way we’ll be captured by phone companies that never liked or > understood the Internet in the first place.) > > But meanwhile we are not the same. We are digital beings now, and we are > being made by digital technology and the Internet. No less human, but a lot > more connected to each other—and to things that not only augment and expand > our capacities in the world, but replace and undermine them as well, in ways > we are only beginning to learn. > > One more: Mark Stahlman's The End of Memes or McLuhan 101 > <https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/the-end-of-memes-or-mcluhan-101/>, > in which he unpacks both figure / ground and formal cause. The point of both > here is that what we tend to focus on—data, surveillance, politics, memes, > stories—are figures on a ground that causes all of their forms. And that > ground is digital technology itself. > > That ground is like the power of speech, of tool-making, of writing, of > printing, of rail transport, mass production, electricity, automobiles, radio > and television—all of which were obsolesced by new technologies that also > retrieved what was still useful about them: new technologies that in turn > will also became obsolesced and retrieved anew by another round of formally > causational tech which in modern times we call "disruptive." > > Digital technology, however, is less disruptive and world-changing than it is > world-making. It is as hard to make sense of this virtual world than it is to > sense roundness in the apparently flat horizons of our physical world. It's > also too easy to fall for the misdirections inherent in all effects of formal > causes. For example, it's much easier to talk about Trump than about what > made him possible. (McLuhan: "People...do not want to know why radio caused > Hitler and Gandhi alike.") > > So here's where I am now on all this: > > We have not become data. We have become digital, while remaining no less > physical. And we can't understand what that means if we focus only on data. > Politics in digital conditions is pure effect, and pure misdirection away > from how digital tech causes not just politics, but everything it involves. > Looking to policy for cures to digital ills is ironically both unavoidable > and sure to produce unintended consequences. For an example of both, look no > farther than the GDPR. It demoted human beings to mere "data subjects," > located nearly all agency with "data controllers" and "data processors," has > done little so far to thwart unwelcome surveillance, and has caused > boundlessly numerous, insincere, misleading and wasteful (of time, energy, > and cognitive and operational overhead) "cookie notices," almost all of which > are designed to obtain "consent" to what the regulation was meant to stop—and > called into being monstrous new legal and technical enterprises, both > satisfying business market demand for ways to obey the letter of the GDPR > while violating its spirit. > Power is moving to the edge. That's us. Yes, there is massive concentration > of power and money in the hands of giant companies on which we have become > terribly dependent. But there are operative failure modes in all those > companies, and digital tech remains ours no less than theirs. > > I could make that list a lot longer, but that's enough for my main purpose > here, which is to raise the topic of research. > > ProjectVRM was conceived in the first place as a development and research > effort. As a Berkman Klein Center project, in fact, it has something of an > obligation to either do research, or to participate in it. > > We've encouraged development for thirteen years. Now some of that work is > drifting over to the Me2B Alliance <https://www.me2balliance.org/> which has > good leadership, funding and participation. There is also good energy in the > IEEE 7012 working group <https://standards.ieee.org/project/7012.html> and > Customer Commons <http://customercommons.org/>, both of which owe much to > ProjectVRM. > > So perhaps now is a good time to start at least start talking about research. > Two possible topics: facial recognition and smart homes. Anyone game? > > Doc > >> On Nov 11, 2019, at 7:16 AM, Yosem Companys <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> In How We Became Our Data, Colin Koopman excavates early moments of our >> rapidly accelerating data-tracking technologies and their consequences for >> how we think of and express our selfhood today. Koopman explores the >> emergence of mass-scale record keeping systems like birth certificates and >> social security numbers, as well as new data techniques for categorizing >> personality traits, measuring intelligence, and even racializing subjects. >> This all culminates in what Koopman calls the “informational person” and the >> “informational power” we are now subject to. The recent explosion of digital >> technologies that are turning us into a series of algorithmic data points is >> shown to have a deeper and more turbulent past than we commonly think. >> Blending philosophy, history, political theory, and media theory in >> conversation with thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, and >> Friedrich Kittler, Koopman presents an illuminating perspective on how we >> have come to think of our personhood—and how we can resist it. >> >> Colin Koopman is associate professor of philosophy and director of the New >> Media & Culture Program at the University of Oregon. His books include: >> Pragmatism as Transition: Historicity and Hope in James, Dewey, and Rorty >> (2009); Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity >> (2013); and How We Become Our Date: A Genealogy of the Informational Person >> (2019). His published articles on pragmatism have appeared in Journal of the >> History of Philosophy, diacritics, Metaphilosophy, Contemporary Pragmatism, >> Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, and elsewhere. >> >> https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo38181810.html >> <https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo38181810.html> >
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