Innovation Communities
The Need For A Personal Digital Privacy Strategy
The tensions between information freedom and personal control are exploding, and not simply because of the benefits of sharing information using new media. Massive commercial and government interests, along with malevolent individuals, have much to gain as each of us reveals highly granular personal information, much of it in the public domain by default. Read more
Is Privacy An Outmoded Idea In The Digital Age?
In the real world, we have many faces, roles or identities that we present in different contexts: mother, daughter, wife, boss, employee, shopper, citizen, participant, attendee, bystander, volunteer, coffee drinker, etc. They are all “public” … Read more
Big Brother 2.0
Recently the New York Times reported that “Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight.” Read more
Corporations, The Main Beneficiaries Of Personal Sharing
The most powerful forces making the case for sharing personal information are not philosophers or media pundits — they are social media companies and other corporations who have a lot to gain from our social norms about privacy changing. Read more
Real Dangers Of Thoughtless Sharing
The longer term, societal effects of a general loss of privacy due to ubiquitous data availability and surveillance are not well-understood. The ability to record nearly everything and to make that record available to others is unprecedented in human history, and defeats parallels. What will it be like to grow up in a world that does not forget? Will comments posted online at age 14 discourage people from seeking public office or speaking out years later, out of fear? Read more
To Share Or Not To Share
Privacy is nothing if not the freedom to be let alone, to experiment and to make mistakes, to forget and to start anew, to act according to conscience, and to be free from the oppressive … Read more
Living Out Loud — Should We All Be More “Open?”: The Upside Of Sharing
The ubiquity of digital gadgets and sensors, the pervasiveness of networks and the benefits of sharing very personal information through social media have led some to argue that privacy as a social norm is changing … Read more
To Share Or Not To Share
The tensions between information freedom and personal control are exploding today and not simply because of the benefits of sharing information using new media. Rather there are massive commercial, government interests along with malevolent individuals … Read more
CBC Music A Good Step In The Right Direction
To borrow a title from one of Shakespeare’s plays, the opposition to CBC’s new music service is much ado about nothing. At no cost to the listener, the service streams Canadian music over the Internet, … Read more
Can We Retain Privacy In The Era Of Big Data?
Our society is collectively creating, storing and communicating information at nearly exponential rates of growth. Most of this data is personally identifiable, and third parties control much of it. This personal data will be archived … Read more