Monthly Archives: December 2002

googling

Although i’ve read notes on Googling potential dates before, i really like this latest by the Ethicist at the New York Times (even though i don’t completely agree). It’s a tough conundrum, and the technology has certainly changed our expectations of privacy and awareness of one another. Then again, should this information be so readily available? How does it change our lives when we have to always operate as though we could be Googled by dates, by potential employers, etc.? How do we stand up to inaccuracies that do not go away because someone else owns the site that throws libel against us? Interesting ethical questions… [Of course, Google realizes they’re in a tough place too.]

psy mosh pits

Ok.. that was odd. Last night, i went to see S.U.N. Project at the DNA and found myself needing to brace against one of the poles so as to not be a part of the first psytrance mosh pit i’ve ever witnessed. All the same, my bouncing took on a whole new form and i was quite amazed that my knees lasted until 5:30 (at which point they screamed murder and i limped home). Very weird i must say…

Persistence of Data

I sat in on a conversation about data persistence in relation to archiving issues today. As i’m often anti-archiving (because of the problems with persistence of data for individual data management), this conversation was quite intriguing to me. In particular, to hear from librarian/archivists who believe in recording history for good purposes. It was interesting to think about recording history but not making it accessible to the public (research-only, genuinely, kinda like the records that aren’t openable until everyone is dead). Ease of access (as well as the collapse of spatial & temporal contexts) are huge reasons why archiving online data is so much different than archiving elsewhere. Yet, i could totally understand why the folks i spoke with were so adament that archives occur, and with really good valid reasons. Anyhow, good new approach to an old topic in my head..

an interesting guy

I had lunch today with a rather interesting fellow… He runs an organization called “Students for Genital Integrity” at SFSU. Since i already knew a lot about Intersex Genital Mutilation and Female Genital Mutilation, we spent a lot of the time talking about the other area that they cover that i know very little about: the problems with circumsizing men (and the controversies around this topic). It was fascinating – he gave me an interesting history of the issue, it’s place in medical, social and religious texts and otherwise engaged me to think about something i hadn’t ever considered. SFIndyMedia.org has a nice little article on the topic.

thinking today

I love how good places let me think… Today i’ve been trying to grapple with the overarching tendency to see the digital realm as a Panopticon. This troubles me because while the end results are awefully comparable, Bentham architected the Panopticon for a particular purpose. Conversely, the digital realm was not constructed with this purpose in mind; it has evolved. In its evolution, people are not cognizant of the observation and thus are not following the same type of obedience to authority noted by Bentham. Instead, people are developing their own prison under the false impression that they are building a castle (referring to the terrible movie “The Last Castle”). They think that they are providing information to help their lot, but instead they are building boxes that not only keep them in but compare them computationally to a societal norm and then treat them according to their distance from such. Anyhow, fresh thoughts… yummy thinking.. Yay for San Francisco!