My Buzz Paparazzi

Make it. Tag it. Share it. Are we becoming our own version of paprazzi malice?
Twitpics - emphasis on the Twit part - can be revealing. Not only from the social curiosity of 'what I am doing' details (ooo salicious), but for the Followers who are keen to see, not only where we are, but how we are. This is the danger of camera phones and Twitter mobile applications people.

New York, ever the city ahead of the game, has banned mobile phones from its Top Private Members Clubs (boo no fun, now where can we get pictures of Loopy Lohan?!) You leave your coat and gadgets at the door. Gossip Girl territory this is NOT. Unless you're James Bond and have hidden on your person something descrete intended to broadcast the indescrete.

Staying in Turkey a couple of weeks ago slicing through Kalkan harbour was yacht 'A' - owned by Andrey Melnichenko, the 36-year-old Russian billionaire industrialist. Aside from the imposing presence there exists a 'no photo (we're rich) please' forcefield. And not to be outdone another Russian billionaire Roman Ambramovich has installed an anti-paparazzi “shield”. Both are likely to have other 'lasers' too, to slice at a distance any paps caught snooping at the bow.

In sum, social media is for the sharing of personal information, yours and mine, with known friends and other friends of friends - who might be friends in the future. Or not. This level of social sharing promotes individuals as social savvy, successful and open. Unless your Jordan, then you just look needy, tacky and should probably stop tweeting it all up anyway. And keep your clothes on.

Alongside all these information shares, there should be concerns about privacy and surveillance. If you are not concerned yet, you should be. What problems exist now - such as the dilemmas about not being able to find friends, to disconnect and regrets over sharing too much - are only going to be further accentuated in the future. Are we ready for this? And what are the social and legal consequences? Will we always be seen to be part of 'fluffy' and nice communities? Or do things have the possibility to become as malicious as they are pervasive?

Hoping to answer some of these questions, is a workshop about Privacy and Security on Social Networks in Belgium next month. I intend to go - fireworks and all (its on November 5th). I shall report back from the frontline - paparazzi style for readers here. Watch this post...

Getting the full snoop. What’s next?

Spending hours in front of my computer and constantly attached to my phone, my (rather inquisitive) mind has never before been so littered with various divergences, distractions and imaginary social instances.

These start innocently enough – looking at a friends Wall on Facebook, back-tracking their posts to other friends, then looking at their friends, taking a glimpse at tagged photos… And uh-oh is it the afternoon already?

At my defence I point to the possibilities offered by the capability of technology that afford such social rational. In diong so my argument is based on an awareness that not only are my friends doing the same , but also that they will also make their judgements and how you react and/or are aware of such activities reflects and affects your mood and, ultimately, your relationships.

Nevertheless, this particular social state is addictive. I am proud to state that I have never intruded where the boundaries of public decency and good grace of friendship respect would not allow. As such (thank goodness) I have never unearthered the unexpected: a previously unknown dependency on drugs, internet porn, gambling, or some other wayward and socially disapproved activity of those in my network(s). BUT I shall confess, that this type of social snooping has taken over parts of my everyday life and increasingly take up my creative energies, have infiltratrated my sleep and take over my time.

Now it is difficult to try and pry oneself away from such veillance. But should one?...

Putting these thoughts together I am already nose-deep into Sam Gosling’s psychological take on ‘other people’s stuff’. His notion of the Snoop celebrates what your ‘stuff’ says about you. In doing so, Gosling interprets from what people leave in their bathroom, to how they arrange their desk and order their bedroom to build up an interpretative picture of the inner self. Such elements of daily life are suggestive not only of elements of our character, but now sat alongside the constant streams of social information from SNSs can reveal our most personal qualities.

It strikes me that such perceptions fall into three categories.

1. The ‘fair game’ category: Where going through others social information is completely acceptable. Such feeds are broadcast as direct elements of your SNS newsfeed and make it permissible (and pleasing) to check out the related image uploads, wall posts etc.
2. The ‘sneaky game’ category: For those occasions when you have been following the fair game state of play, but find yourself clicking through to target specific information and/or people in other networks - including those whom you may not know. But this is not considered ‘a big deal’ since you share a friend in common right?… ummm…
3. Finally the red alert, red alert, red alert! ‘devious game’ category: Devious because you have had to employ time and thought into hacking into a private account. The main dividing line being the completely illegal and totally shameful set of actions that you now employ to turn a snoop into a potential scoop. I am pleased to say I have never ever (nor would I) do this and so can happily dismiss this level of snoopage!

But why do we follow such actions? A good friend of mine has justified her ‘devious game’ and red alert! actions as they took place during an 'uncontrollable set of circumstances' that conspired during a break up. Upon receiving a ‘mysterious text’, which contained the message: ‘do you know where ***** is tonight?’ Quite naturally she wanted to uncover some answers…

Following the sneaky game play I have uncovered some elements of my own social snippets about friends, boyfriends and acquaintances - mostly when aided by a (vain) curiousity to know what exes of past boyfriends have been like, what groups someone belongs to, the kinds of images they upload and their friends tag etc. and then interpreting what this says about them...

However, there comes (before) the red alert! point when I (and so should you) feel the need to stop! and I recognise that enough is enough is enough. Crossing over to the dark side you run risk of invading (whether intentionally or not) into the lives of others and also making yourself look less than trustworthy and dishonest in the process.

In actuality the opportunity to snoop is a magnificent social divergence. Even so the clicking through of that tagged photo can quickly lead to a red alert situation! The result? Our actions have to be contextualised in measured proportions - so only snoop as far as you would want your friends to in your life…

ZeroCool

It’s funny how the days quickly roll by as lives are streamed by the various portals of socially charged information. Hello to Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Dopplr…

It doesn’t seem over ten years since our alleged entry into the ethereal arena of cyberspace. And my, didn’t we take it all so seriously ‘back then’.

Over the weekend I re-watched Hacker’s. Director’s Iain Softley’s, 1995, vision of a New York situated cyberpunk culture. Lot’s of smoking, lots of inline - should that be online? ‘waaaaaaay cool dude!’ - skates and 'a 28.8 bps [sic] modem!’. And with Angelina Jolie.

Friends are made, lost along the way, re-made and the movie ends with Angelina getting wet in a pool with not-a-lot-a-on as a result of the games, territorial fights of fancy and the ultimate battle with a ‘big bad wolf’ corporation as led by the hacking community and culture.

So, today, why so 1990s?

One line in the film stands out, when a friend of the ‘PhantonPhreak’s’ asserts, ‘you’re nobody unless you have a handle’ – an individuals self-nominated ‘cyber’ name, the equivalent of what we would use as a username.

Today, it could equally be argued that ‘you’re nobody if you use anything but your real name’. An interesting turn of events. Where once the anonymous identity reigned supreme, now you’re only ‘insanely great’ if your friends can recognise you and be there to track your every movement. To this extent, the Hacker's suggestive nod to George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother ‘I’m watching you’ is suitably fitting.

Today this would be 'we're watching you'... Add to this observation, today the main protagonist ZeroCool would be zero cool, dismissed as a fake persona and consequently receive no friends on Facebook.

There’s been a steady change to the inclusion (intrusion?) of the arrays of technology, applications and resources that supplement our daily social highlights, lowlights and reveal the lowlifes. Perhaps we should all get used to suffering a new malady of data retention.

From today all ISPs will be ‘legally obliged’ to store all details of your internet content and telephony for 12 months. Whilst not the BigBrother central database of communications information – there are longer term outcomes that will affect our civil liberties. One example is how last month Facebook both defended its right to impose, and had users obliged to support, the sites new terms of service. For Zuckerberg this was promoted on the Facebook blog as an opportunity, 'On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information’ – in short, ‘we have your data and we’re not afraid to use it’. Faced with heavy criticism, the threat of legal action and rebel against Facebook by users (the Facebook group, People Against the New Terms of Service, grew to nearly 150,000 members) the company reinstated the old terms of service and with a new Facebook (trust us) group: The Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities (with less than 100,000 members).

One day such events will tempt us to look back and recall not only ‘oh what a funny place that little cyber world was’, but to lament ‘oh how we used to be at liberty’… Now that was a funny old world which was far from ZeroCool.

Some questions to keep in mind: What is privacy? How are we surveilled across networks? What values do should we hold important for personal data? How can governments, corporations, and individuals make information safe?...