Outstanding Small Consultancy
CIPR PRide Midlands Awards 2009
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Taking a look in the digital mirror
15th March 2009. Posted by Ruth Pipkin. Trackback
Yesterday was my first taste of SXSW Interactive 2009, and my first panel was Is Privacy Dead, or Just Very Confused?
As the panel was made up of academics, the discussion largely covered issues of definition and context, and whether or not the very concept of privacy has been 'ruptured' by sites such as Facebook.
Siva Vaidhyanathan from the University of Virginia argued that privacy shouldn't be seen as the opposite of publicity: just because we chose to share a certain amount of our private lives on public sites, doesn't mean we aren't just as concerned about what we don't share. He argued that privacy shouldn't be seen as a substance that can be measured or bargained with.
Increasingly, applications such as Gmail and Facebook work on the premise that we are prepared to trade away certain aspects of our personal data in return for a free service. Most people are aware that the more information they put online, the more useful they become to marketers. But, just because you chose to put information out there, does it automatically mean that it should be used in any way?
The most interesting concept for me came from Judith Donath, Director of the Sociable Media Group at MIT. Judith suggested that many of us will go to great lengths to create a positive impression, we'll take time and effort over our personal appearance and the way we look or dress. But most of us are completely unaware of the profiles that companies are making about us from our online data.
Many of us will have several 'public faces'; we may present ourselves differently at work compared to when we are relaxing with friends. Sites such as Twitter, Linked In and Facebook are blurring these different personas, but what implications will this have for us in the future?
Judith argued that new technologies should allow us to put a mirror up to our digital selves. If people could see more clearly the personal profile that they are creating online, they could make more informed decisions about the information that they are putting out there, and the trails that they are leaving behind. This may or may not lead to people changing the way they interact online, but at least they would be informed.
This seems like a really clear opportunity to me. I often have discussions with both clients and friends about the pros and cons of the social web. Judith's idea of the digital mirror made me think that most people who have concerns about opening up information about themselves, or their companies, would probably feel far more comfortable about it if they could see exactly what their online profile looked like over a period of time.
There are simple ways of finding out what information is out there about each of us or our companies. Setting up a simple Google Alert can enable you to track what information is being published about you online. Occasionally I have a look back over my personal Twitter account as a reminder of the things that I've been thinking/doing recently (cups of tea, food and cats seem to rate quite highly...) But imagine being able to view a clear digital profile of yourself that collated your Amazon purchases with your Twitter feed, your Facebook status and your email conversations. I wonder how many of us would think twice about the public information that we share online?