These are just notes taken during the talk. Nothing structured. Probably an ephemeral post that I'll edit later.
*****
Eye Beam
wikipedia illustrated
visual free culture
launching on Saturday
future everything
Getting intimate with Invisible Audiences
the privacy debate in the context of liveness
two major references
chat roulette & the bible
Today's cultural leaders define the privacy debate
the geeks
for them, it is black and white. Private vs public contradiction
Publicness=a public good. Demanding privacy is selfish
people hold forth for the freedom of information.
Information wants to be free does not translate to freedom in the case of information
free markets do not lead to free societies
Need to get away from the binary thinking about private vs public
secrecy discreteness confidentiality and intimacy are all missing from the debate
Our machines cannot make something intimate, only private and public
The technological failure i good. As long as they cannot be recreated technologically they can't be manipulated
to overcome the tech failure, we are dumbing down our social life.
We give up on secrecy, discreteness, confidentiality and intimacy
communicating in mediated spaces is performance (yes, but relationships exist outside of mediated spaces as well
Hannah Arendt quote about public spaces (squares, etc) but also
Dana Boyd mediated publics-social media sites
4 properties of mediate publics
1. Persistence. It can stay forever on some database (not like the street)
2. Searchability (I wish it was more searchable... sigh)
3. Replicability (can lead to manipulation)
4. Invisible Audiences -- you don't know who is watching or what the context of the watching is in. (This is something I love about mediated publics. It's a huge thrill)
"learn to express themselves and learn" Arendt
Chat roulette
distributed ad-hoc intimacy
Is chat roulette a mediated space?
No persistence, no searchability, no replicability (can't copy paste--wellllll, you can record it easily but it's not a feature of the tool iteslf), and no invisible audience
In chat roulette it is not content, it is conversation.
Hey! He just hit my sweet spot!
I like this guy.
This is the reason I hate Facebook. It's broadcasting over conversation. Also, it's designed to prevent you from talking to strangers, which to me is one of the main purposes of social networks.
Chat roulette is closer to the street. It's a new model of a mediated public.
Chat roulette is a masterbater's paradise. The shuffled conversation lowers the empathy level. You can see but you can't be touched. The audience is protected. Also, CR you are penalized if your are skipped 3 times in the past 5 minutes.
Also a warning that they are violating US and UN law and cooperate with law enforcement, but they do not at all say that it is against CR culture.
Mediation is a violation of chat roulette culture. videoing the screen or taking a screen shot is more a violation of the CR culture than showing your penis. It turns the conversation into content. So sad.
Consider the street (Arendt)
make certain acts or expression real by having others acknowledge them
street is not what it used to be
geo-mobile devices, sensors, geolocated social networking means that everything is
extended manipulated augmented hacked
our physical urban space is being turned into a mediated public. Huge historical change.
face recognition makes our photos searchable
Should we start thinking about life without privacy?
Is privacy irrlevant
privacy not relevant in most pre-technical non-democratic societies (Ian Graham)
Everbody knows everyone else and private and public are fluid.
Adam and Eve hid themselves from God but God called them out. Where are you?
The first thing after they bite from the fruit of knowledge is to realize that they have been exposed to an invisible audience. So they look for privacy and control of their representation.
Creepy paradise.
Am I my brother's keeper?
Cain was about to commit the first perfect crime, except that God saw him. When Cain is asked by God, he feels the invisible audience
we have institutional invisible audiences to protect us from the Cain's of the world
Security frames the privacy debate. What if Google sells its data to the CAI? What about the privacy of Chinese activists? Why do we always come to these big stories? Isn't privacy important for everyone?
I have nothing to hide. If you have something to hide, maybe you shouldn't do it in the first place (Schmidt of Google said)
Good reasons to value privacy
Ham, father of Canaan, sees his drunk father passed out and tells his two brothers outside. Noah gets God to punish Ham by cursing him. Ham took God's invisible audience role
Panopticon
You can't see what goes on in the tower, but you know that you might always be watched.
status of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power (Foucault)
lack of privacy causes conformity
Is that true?
What does it mean for walking to become publishing?
Really interesting question. Very pertinent to my work.
How do we continue having intimacy in our new mediated cultures?