Monthly Archives: October 2003

Are friends the key to privacy?

I’m With Stupid: How Having Friends Might Be the Key to Both Privacy and Identity is a great article by Robert X. Cringely. In it, he addresses what the key questions are when we talk about privacy and identity. He teases apart the difference between “is this accurate data” and “are you who you say you are.” He addresses both extremists. And finally, he suggests how spam and other privacy issues might be addressed through a friends of friend network. A good read!

Amazon was sent from the heavens

Older friends of mine gasp at the realization that i’ve never done research without the web. Yet, despite the web, i’ve always had one problem that has haunted me. Sure, i can read many computer-related journals and articles, look up any book and read anyone’s college essay on most topics, but there are so many books that i just stare at and scream grep.

Grep.

I just want grep to work on my books. Well, gosh darn, Amazon went and invented it. They were sent from the heavens i tell you. This will revolutionize the next generation of college students.

lakoff on voting with your identity

In “The Frame Around Arnold,” Lakoff (re)suggests that people vote their identity:

In ‘Moral Politics,’ I suggested that voters vote their identity they vote on the basis of who they are, what values they have, and who and what they admire. A certain number of voters identify themselves with their self-interest and vote accordingly. But that is the exception rather than the rule. There are other forms of personal identification with one’s ethnicity, with one’s values, with cultural stereotypes, and with culture heroes. The most powerful forms of identification so far as elections are concerned are with values and corresponding cultural stereotypes.

I don’t think that i agree. I think that they *use* their identity to vote, but they don’t vote their identity. For example, i used my identity to vote *against* a candidate in the recall and SF mayoral elections, not particularly *for* any candidate. In fact, i don’t identify with any of the candidates i’ve ever seen… i choose the lesser of evils. Most candidates represent a very small percentage of people. Certainly, some of the represent what people would like to one day be (and if your ideal is to be the Terminator, goddess help you). In the States, they vote Protestant Ethic style. But seriously, who in California really represents the Mexican community? Who represents the disenfranchised migrant workers (oh, wait, they can’t vote…)? And who on earth does Ahr-nold really represent? I’m sorry… but i don’t buy that he represents the strict father morality to most people.

That said, i really appreciate a lot of Lakoff’s arguments, particularly his deconstruction of the framing of the election.

Techsploitation

Annalee Newitz’s latest “Techsploitation” addresses reality RPG (role-playing-games) with a funny address to Tribe.net:

Yet another kind of reality RPG is Tribe.net, an uncensored online community that resembles Friendster in almost every way except for the fact that there is no autocratic dictator named Jonathan Abrams running the thing and deleting the accounts of people who freak him out. At Tribe.net you log in and create an identity for yourself, complete with as much or as little real information as you like. You can be an entirely fictional creation, complete with fake photos, or you can document your every little personality quirk, from a love of data mining to a predilection for farting quietly in movie theaters. The game of Tribe, such as it is, is to accumulate as many friends and tribal affiliations as you can. The more often you log in and post messages to tribe discussion boards, the more friends you’ll get and the more satisfied you’ll be. It’s like creating a group of Sims characters. “You” watch “yourself” moving around in a social space, and “you” interact with a bunch of other “people” in “rooms.”

Who are all these people on Tribe anyway? As if I were some wide-eyed social critic from the late 1980s, I find myself discovering once again that people are different online than they are in person. Shy people are eloquent. Sexy people are boring. I have two busy friends, whose presence I often miss in real life, whom I now get to see nearly everyday on Tribe.

“Wow, Jason and Liz are so cool!” I think as I read their Tribe posts. “I wish they existed in real life!” And then I realize they do exist; I saw them last year at a party, and they are indeed as funny and smart as their “selves” on Tribe.

Am I confused or just happy to see them? Am I going to the store or is this just a game? I’ll have to decide.

(Bolding for the sentence that humored me the most)

Scary Party 2: Escape from the Castro!

I’m on social ban until i catch up on academic work or until Halloween (whichever comes first). Halloween is my favorite holiday – costumes, candy, absurdity. It’s the one time per year when everyone is free to be creative and embody something from their imagination. Given this, i’m ecstatic to be spending it at False Profit’s “Scary Party 2: Escape from the Castro” (watch the trailer). [Translation: crazy breaks party and haunted house with some of my closest friends]

the power in hyper-connecting

Wired just ran an article on the “hypernetworked nodes who secretly run the world.” I knew this article was coming out because i was talking with one of the people represented about the power that one has in being a hyperconnector and how managing that power is a complete art. Of course, each of the nodes represented discusses their version of the art.

So, i have to wonder…. Can sites actually empower the marginalized when the hyperconnectors know darn well that their power is in maintaining a certain level of secrecy about who they know.