I wrote an entry for misbehaving on ubicomp, privacy and vulnerability, but forgot to link it here.

Today was the first day of Ubicomp (the conference for those interested in ubiquitous computing). Per tradition, the first day was a collection of workshops in which people submitted applications to attend. Much to many people’s frustration, there were two opposing workshops with overlapping themes: intimacy and privacy. Perhaps they do not seem that overlapping, but they are quite intertwined and many participants were immediately curious about the others’ workshop. In the Intimacy workshop, we noted towards the end that the explicity topic of privacy had not really arisen all day. In raising this point, we noted that we had been grappling with it as vulnerability, not explicitly privacy. In regards to privacy in intimate spaces, people were far more concerned with vulnerability than privacy.

The intimacy workshop was fascinating for Ubicomp, as its topic put quite a few people on edge. Yet its draw was significant.

Dinner was attended by a blend of folks from the privacy and intimacy workshops. One topic immediately surfaced. While the intimacy workshop was 2/3 women, not a single woman attended the privacy workshop. Perhaps the traditional approaches to ubicomp are a bit masculinized linguistically and culturally…