Google and Privacy

The recent Google’s poor judgement about the user’s privacy in social networking environment has caused a quite a stir. I have also blogged my experience of it. I watch with a total amazement for the complete failure to understand the importance of privacy.

Ironically, Google executives in Italy were convicted for ‘showing’ (providing a platform) the inappropriate user created content on YouTube. I do expect Google to take a responsibility for responding and assisting in preventing and protecting individuals and communities in cyberspace from people and organizations who exploit and abuse it.

However, I do not expect Google to take legal responsibility for the content created by users. Why should they? The most worrying aspect here is the fact that content providers are considered to be responsible for the content and treating cyberspace as an established institution.

This is my unhappy ‘Buzz’

Google’s social networking tool, ‘Buzz’ caught most of our attention in the last few days. I only got around to click ‘Buzz’ yesterday. Driven by a curiosity (for research mostly), with one single click, ‘Buzz’ was embedded in my Google email account. That is all what I can remember. I found two followers, among these two, there was a friend who was very unlikely person to sign up for any social networking site, never mind following me! In speaking with him, it was confirmed that nothing was intentional and did not even realise what had happened. It seemed that by clicking ‘Buzz’, it automatically created a network of friends (as reported by BBC news today) and sent off follower messages to people in our email address list.

The next thing I did was to stop ‘Buzz’ and signed off. Personally, I am very disappointed by ‘Buzz’ for assuming who should be in my network of friends and then would initiate creating 'my network' by sending out follower messages to people. The concerning aspect of the workings of ‘Buzz’ is in its underlying assumption that our data belongs to them. Google appears to be claiming the ownership of my data. In doing so, it is challenging the boundary of private and public sphere.

We witness the changes in the notion and perception of privacy with the emergence of various social networking tools. However, it should be noted that the decision to publish what has been previously considered to be private in a public sphere is being made by us, the users. The social networking tools are certainly providing tools and the mechanism to facilitate a change to the concept of privacy. However, it is users who should have power to act as their own gatekeeper for online social network to become buzzing.

Tag cloud and the contextual link

For some time now I've been interested and admired much of the thinking behind folksonomy and tag cloud approaches ever since I first saw them in Flickr.

For me; these micro-word instances are (or should be) continually tied to its context through the use of linkages and web connections. These tightly coupled links, the tag clouds are part of the practical accomplishments of the people in situated action.

These clouds produced by Channel 4 News remain faithful to this coupling concept, by clicking on the word we find out not only how many times the cloud word was used, but it also connects us directly with the context via YouTube video for example. The link takes you to the actual transcript of the speech together with the video.

http://www.channel4.com/news/media/2009/12/day09/pbr2009_snowcloud/wordCloud.swf?embed=false

Snowcloud: Pre-budget report (Updated on 09 December 2009) By Channel 4 News

Why do I like them, or rather, why do I think I like folksonomic approaches? It makes us think about the use of categories. Categorisation schema, impose an invisible moral order, whereas folksonomies are just that, ‘ordinary’. This follows Schutz term of ‘self-typification’, the individual making intersubjective constructs and thus repositions the relationship we have to imposed structures.

Potentiality is the Key Characteristic of Social Networking

For the last few days, I have been made to think more about social networking. I watched ‘BBC’s Virtual Revolution’ over the weekend and read ‘A world of connections’ a special report on social networking in January 30th issue of The Economist and to top it up, I picked up the iTNOW BCS magazine, featuring ‘Social networking: Why businesses need to embrace the latest web 2.0 applications’ from Howard. After watching the programme and reading the articles, I asked myself, ‘what is it about social networking that needs to be taken so seriously?’

About three years ago, Howard and I began discussing and thinking about Web 2.0 and specifically the usage and social and business implications of podcasting. We wrote a paper (not published in an academic journal) titled, “Examining disruptive socio-technological characteristics of podcasting” and concluded that “The integration of podcasting into both main stream technologies as well as other Web 2.0 technologies could lead to‘fusion of disruptive technologies’ (Rao et al. 2006). The potential impact of integration of multiple disruptive technologies can result in a new discontinuous innovation, creating new forms of market value (Rao et al. 2006). The developmental history of podcasting, started as a medium for individual expression with the possible marriage to other technologies will increasingly reflect that of the butterfly effect.”

We recognized that for such technology, the key is not, what it is and what it does now, but what it could be i.e. its potentiality. Why does social networking excite us all? It is not just about the changes it brings about in business models, disrupting the value chains and the changes in human relationships but it offers us the unlimited potentiality for the creative mind to flourish.