The Atlantic | March 2004 | Word Fugitives | Wallraff

Word Fugitives this is a really neat article. via danah

Taking Spin Out of Report That Made Bad Into Good Health

Taking Spin Out of Report That Made Bad Into Good Health - a NYT article talking about misrepresentation of statistics by the administration report. This really illustrates the point that numbers can be misleading and their value is in correct interpretation that is so difficult to acheive. The concept of "massaging" the data into giving "expected" results is not new. The "Bell Curve" has illustrated misues of statistics in a thousand page opus. Unfortunately, once the first interpretation is made, it is very difficult to change the audience's mind even if the problems are explained soon after... first impressions are a hell of a force.

Japan's Wireless Internet Use Model for US

Japan's Wireless Internet Use Model for US
The cell phone is a way of life in Japan, and its not just used to make phone calls anymore. Cell phone users in Japan are using their phone for everything -- as alarm clocks, maps, for e-mail, music and more. The United States has thus far lagged behind. Around 55 percent of Japan's population use the wireless Internet, a number that tripled since 2000. Users turn to their phones before their computers to surf the net. Some, especially the younger crowd, see cell phones as an extension of their identity, choosing icons and wallpaper that fits their personality. Students are using e-mail through their phones in class to send questions to professors. Marketers are having a field day as they send ads or coupons to drive sales when business is slow. Though the United States is lagging, many hope it will adopt the wireless Internet as Japan has already done. (Source: Washington Post)

>> And they can keep hoping. While cell phone adoption is underway in the US, some of the data and extension services have lagged miserably behind. Why is that? Well, one of the answers may be the difference in physical space and modes of traversing that space. In the US, metropolitan centers with well developed public transport and good network coverage plus good cell phone data services offerings, can be counted on one hand... well two if you squint a little. A mobile device like a cell phone requires a lot of attention if it is to be used for more than just talking (even txting requires attention). However, users in the US do not have much downtime in attention as they drive their cars from one place to another. I wonder how the adoption games will be played out here... I am certain, however, this country will not mirror japan any time soon.

TRUSTe standards

Industry Enterprise Team to Develop Wireless Privacy Standards
TRUSTe unveiled a new wireless privacy standards program aimed at providing wireless telecom vendors with actionable and practical guidelines for protecting consumer privacy. TRUSTe teamed with a number of major corporations, including AT&T Wireless, MMA and Microsoft, to form the Wireless Advisory Committee responsible for implementing the new standards. Dubbed the Wireless Privacy Principles and Implementation Guidelines, the program will work with companies in the industry to ensure that specific standards regarding consumer notice and consumer consent are achieved. Some of the key areas on which the guidelines focus are privacy statements, third party sharing and the use of location-based information.

Source: PR Newswire

I am really curious to see the actual guidelines that TRUSTe will provide to the industry. Considering that some of the major players in this organization are notorious for privacy oversights (i.e. MS passport problems for example) it is an interesting alliance. I am curious to see how many loopholes they will create and whether the guidelines will take consumer privacy as a concept, seriously. It is an unfortunate turn of events, that considerations of consumer privacy in this country is so immediately associated with revenue losses. I believe that despite DoubleClick's pronouncements in the NYTimes a few days ago that consumers are "relaxing" about privacy, privacy concerns, coupled with continued corporate and government privacy violations, may create a paranoid sort of consumer. Unfortunately, human lazyness is on the side of the culprits :). If they make maintaining privacy as difficult, technically complex, and tedious, they may win :). Its the argument towards considering questions of privacy at the outset of system building, not as an add-on patch towards the end, just because privacy is a tough concept and, you, we are gonna just build first and then see if it works... Band-aids have a nasty feature of falling off eventually, even if they leave some black stains.

apophenia: the pictures in iChat weird me out

the pictures in iChat weird me out - a little post from danah on how sometimes technology designers miss the social implications of their creations made think about my own experiences with technologists and designers. Even at a minor pre-production design level.

I work with designers and technologists from time to time on small projects and it amazes me constantly how much of a devil's advocate I get to play. This incredible desire to use sensors, pictures, feeds, what have you, to detect emotional states, to communicate them to others automatically - is an incredibly powerful drive. Sometimes at the cost of privacy concerncs, understanding of a multifaceted presentation of self, deliberatly limiting the "interesting" parts of the text-based communication.

There is this strange drive to make interaction with technology and the functions it tries to mimik more like the "physical" "real world". I can never understand, WHY? Yes there are lots of incredibly intersting interactions people have with their environments and other people in them every waking minute. A regular alarm clock could probably never mimic the way my cat wakes me up in the mornings. I just don't understand why it should. Hiroshi Ishii in his tangible interafaces paper and a lot of subsequent work, inspired by that paper, explored some exciting ideas. Yet later on, Ben Anderson, a researcher from Britain, was wondering - the physical interaction is "rich" and "interesting" but I don't want to make a series of physical movements if I just want to delete a file!

The Internet and much of our current technology provides a space that may preclude some physical richness, but it I wonder why there is a persistent focus on this limitation. Why its often seen as a limitation? There are limitations in the physical space too! The two mediums offer their own sets of affordances, their own spaces for interactions. It may be more productive to focus on the advantages of these affordances, rather than trying to "fix the differences" with crutches. But then there is ubicomp world on the fringe or intersection of the two... and then things get really screwy... sigh