Social Media cloaking

Overheard. Friend no.1,

'I never joined Facebook cos I actually want to see my friends'

So claimed a non-Facebook friend. This all began one evening in the pub as another friend (Friend no.2) was berating his 'inaction' re. a Friend Request she had sent him.

Which sparked the following...

As social technologies continue to arrive cloaked in rhetoric's of openness, of trust - all the main components for friendship. We appear, in effect, in control of 'our' Web. The very construct of O'Reilly's 'Web 2.0' fosters sharing & caring; participation & reciprocation. Together these obscure how never before have we volunteered up so much personal information.

Thus, as we move from finding what's on the 'web of information' to a series of networks as a 'web of people' (Social Web) the output of all of this social participation is boundless and can be arranged as seemingly comprehensible information dossiers on individuals (everything pulled together from social network profile/s, photos, location, status updates, searches and so on and so forth.).

At the heart of this pulling of social and 'out there' data lies a loss of control over personal information. Take for example MIT's Project Gaydar - set to 'spot' your sexual preference by the social ties on Facebook with various checks accumulated from tagged 'shares', quizes etc. all making very personally identifiable information available (AND quantifiable £s as it is sold on) to third parties.

Amidst such complicit social action/s, one starts to wonder if Friend no.1 has a point. Not because being on the web and/or joining Facebook means that you see less of friends, but rather there are very real social risks that arise from the 'giving away' such personal aspects of yourself.
All rather disconcerting. Until Friend no.2 countered with,

'Well we're all being CCTV surveilled right now! (in the pub) and everywhere else anyway, so what's a few clicks between friends'

And so the above, I find, is more or less exactly how people have decided that it is OK to volunteer up so many aspects of themselves. This is because such social participation has been gradual. Slowly our personal offerings lend themselves to a radical shift in one direction of increasing social exposure - a by-product of wanting to be a constant part of what's going on and open as a link to others.

Besides, as Friend no.1 and no.2 manage to agree before closing time,

'...We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!'

This may have had more to do with the Eagles on the juke box, rather than any real profound thought as to the social state of surveillance and the web though...

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...

The Click Have Eyes

We live in the most surveilled part of Europe. Filmed an average of 300 times when we choose to leave our homes. Feel sorry then for the people of Stratford-upon-Avon as the amount of footage is about to increase. Tony Morgan, James Woodward and David Steele have launched Internet Eyes. The site gives opportunity for those behind the eyes to reap the rewards against crime. No, not 'Them', but You. In the same week when football fans were forced to pay-per-view for a match online, at the same time viewers could choose to watch streamed CCTV footage and if you 'spot a crime' - it's a GOAL!

Alongside the Government plans for ID cards it appears that we are to live as part of increasingly 'inclusive' series of surveillance recordings as we literally zoom in and out of view. The forthcoming nationwide launch of Internet Eyes could be a profitable business. It represents the taking of a virtual journey to uncover criminal incidences just click away. For viewers this means they feel warm and fluffy having uncovered criminal situation/s (Poirot has nothing on these CCTV viewing couch surfing detectives).

Some key points
1. Should such surveillance not be in the hands of professionals and not the public
2. This can only ever work as a 'gesture' in the fight against criminal activity. And I doubt that we'll be allowed to view the CCTV footage inside bank boardrooms.
3. Internet Eyes could represent the next round for reality tv. A pay-per-view which would accumulate as a cash prize for those Spotter's of the crims. There could even be T-shirts.

So there you have it, a business proposition that profits on 'rising crime rate', social surveillance, a bit of public fear and status given to the 'eyes of good' to bring crime rates down and, in principle, convictions up.

Convinced? You could buy the T-Shirt, pay-per-view and find out.

A more exciting and unique use of CCTV has been muscially ascribed by The Get Out Clause. Watch and enjoy viewers. Best of all, no crime.

TEDx Stating the obvious?

Isaac Newton told us that when an apple fell from a tree it invariably headed towards the ground. Noam Chomsky told us we only make sense of the words of another person because we share a knowledge of the basic grammatical structure of language. Such things might seem obvious – especially when presented in a necessarily brief manner to an audience that does not share a common disciplinary background.

I am a social scientist and this means that, in common with others in my discipline, I seek to understand the social world that we all share. We do this through theoretically informed empirical research. So yes - for some people parts or all of my presentation at the recent TEDx might be dismissed as 'trivial', 'uninteresting' or 'boring'. Such critics have every right to hold and broadcast their opinions. However, in so doing they are closing their minds to the possibility of understanding or as Max Weber (another social scientist – but rather more venerable and long dead) put it ‘verstehen’ - by which (broadly) he meant to indicate that human interaction and society is so complex that it may be best understood through detailed description and interpretation. Even if this is 'just to' state the obvious.

It might be maintained that we ‘just get on with’ our interactions across SNSs and so forth. My talk was not of a ‘how to’ kind - as clearly for the audience at these events - Blogs, Twitter, Facebook and so forth are a part of everyday life. Like other social scientists (for example, Erving Goffman and more recently Anthony Giddens to name two) my concern is to ‘get under’ the everyday, the often mundane and taken-for-granted.

Does this matter in our web 2.0 world? Yes - because as social life embraces or (according to some) moves ‘online’ (an old fashioned label to some, including myself) this brings with it all the good and bad aspects of human behaviour. Indeed this shift may enhance or exaggerate and accelerate some forms of behaviour - we have all read reports of ‘cyber’ bullying, relationships damage through SNSs ‘affairs’ and so forth. More pragmatically, an understanding of how and why people move across social media will help in the design of better and sustainable resources. However, the study of such things is still in its infancy and conventional academic work struggles to keep up with the fast pace of change in social media and accompanying research.Thus, the media that you are immersed in and take-for-granted is strange, risky, fast, ephemeral and trivial to most of my academic and commercial colleagues.

My first TEDx proved to be an interesting experience - I’d like to thank my critics for their considered thoughts – I don’t (yet) have a complete answer (but then I’m not as well established, prominent or well-rewarded as the ‘great men’ mentioned above or the other participants at TEDx) - but your responses will feed into my research and the work on my book, ‘Encounters With. Social life in the network society’, in which I am exploring the issues raised in my talk as well as many others in appropriate depth.

For other hot issues on the day and social media noise about TEDxman you might also want to check out the only other female speaker; Sarah Hartley - @foodiesarah

As well as the other attendees and participants,
Louise Bolotin - @louisebolotin

Ian Aspin - @IanAspin

Kim - @Global5ocialite

Ian Forrester - @cubicgarden

And of course the photos - where one shows me uncannily smiley :-D

The Future is Pizza

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s recent consultation into ‘illegal databases’ has revealed – what ‘we’ all know to be true; that personal information records frequently overstep the line when it comes to social ethics and the protection of individual privacy. In short we have a data State. Or rather our State is based on our data; which includes the archiving and retrieval of our personal data.

Other news to hit today is that ‘7% of MPs’ are now ‘on Twitter’. Does this mean that ‘they’ (the Mediated Member’s of Parliament (MMP’s) few) have added themselves to the ranks of the socially mediated many? Or that this is simply scope for shameless self-promotion and a new task for their PA to include into daily updates? But do not forget to be included on WeFollow - the Twitter's new directory for user's (find me as 'mazphd'; 'academic', 'writer' and 'web2.0')

Back to the JRF Reportage which recommeds that ‘A quarter of all government databases are illegal and should be scrapped or redesigned’ – one in particular that stands out for critism is the NHS databases. A ‘health’ care system that cannot be trusted to hold potentially sensitive information or to update consistently for reliable patient records. So aside from being costly; frequently such systems can be criticised for being an ‘ethical and administrative disaster’. But where does the responsibility lie? With ‘them’ as the recorders and holders of our data, or with us? The Data Protection Act is there to safeguard our rights, ‘subject to request access’, to gain information that is held about us on Government databases.

Socially we are being data sorted. Our data is pervasive and increasingly personal. However, the appropriate measures and societal implications are all too easily overlooked - even if we are keen to volunteer information for public directories such as Twitter's WeFollow; Facebook etc.

And so are we to hit a mediated epidemic? We are not so far from the (fun?) scenario of the spoof scenario of the Future of Pizza Ordering – a situation that has unforeseen social consequences…

By dialing for delivery the clip shows how individual's will be subject to data-veillance;

‘you don’t want to order that, linking to your health records indicates that your waistline is already over the optimum health ratio’ Advises the voice on the end of the line.

Here the convergence of personal data is overlaid with Government databases that volunteers information in a way that is designed for ‘our own social good’. Whilst the clip satirises the consumer from a pizza-hungry-perspective, it is suggestive of the more sinister side of data-veillance. One where ‘evidence getting’ is perceived as an acceptable and approved social act.

Until the Government and other organisations get it ‘right’; we are more than a consumer; a ‘pro-sumer’ or mere web participant. We are already in the records of data projects and organisations and this has long-term implications headed by unknown social objectives. Perhaps it is time we started recorded them?...