data body 2.0 (excerpt of visualizing the network)

(Engels)

At this moment, we are in a transition of conventional analog identification to digital virtual identification. Hereby, a mutual trust between government and civilians plays an essential role. The lack of a pure form of identification can result in an emergence of many restrictions and legislation based on movement in the physical and virtual space.

In this paper, personal information is defined as “all the information that is possibly available of one person”. This information encompasses things such as: name, address, location, income, expenses, depths and biometrical- en DNA information, but also information like eating habits, sexual orientation, political opinion, religious beliefs and physical appearance. For short, it reveals intimate, private, economic en political issues in the life of a person. All the unique features that can be registered will form the identity of a natural person.

Within social studies, identity is considered a process of becoming. Stuart Hall (1994) makes a distinction between two influences on the production of identity. Firstly, he states that [1994:394] identity is being produced by differences between cultures based on similar histories; like slavery, colonization and migration. Secondly, he states that [1994:394] a cultural identity is formed by a reproduction of the past. Thus, the telling of stories and myths. So, when is stated that “All the unique features that can be registered will form the identity of a natural person.”, we have to keep in mind that the (virtual) identity is never fixed, but rather dynamic: it is continuously becoming (completed by unique elements).

Computers have brought several advantages to cope with these issues. These advantages do not necessarily apply to the privacy of civilians nor to the control of the government. Thanks to technology, the government can enforce tons of complicated legislations upon civilians, which is only possible within a process of fast decision making and calculation power. When somebody is speeding for example, the authority will take notice by means of technology (speed sensors). Which will lead to a punishment (speeding ticket). For the authority it seems impossible to grasp total control, though. Technology works both ways (Spam, internet piracy, hacking).

Due to the lack of control for both civilians and government, they have to cope with the following issues: it has been more difficult to (1) discover what personal information is stored where and by whom and (2) what it is used for. The Dutch legislation on the protection of personal information elaborates on these issues. It states [WBP, 2006], in a nutshell, that personal information can only be used for the purpose the civilian has meant it to be used for. And, if this is the case, it should be accurate and complete. The appearance of a digital virtual identity has a tendency to bring fear upon us. Fear of big brother and anarchy. Based on the impact that exposing your digital identity could potentially unveil. Based on what bad things might happen.

The digital virtual identity can be thought of in terms of a body, which incorporates a collection of personal information. The ‘founder’ of this data body is Steve Kurtz (2006), who is a member of the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). He writes in Utopian Promises – Net Realities an essay, where a virtual body is considered as one of five utopian promises. Kurtz (2006) states: “The virtual body is a body of great potential. On this body we can reinscribe ourselves using whatever coding system we desire. We can try on new body configurations. We can experiment with immortality by going places and doing things that would be impossible in the physical world.” (Kurtz, 2006) The data body is a ‘fascist sibling’ of the virtual body. “(…) a much more highly developed virtual form, and one that exists in complete service to the corporate and police state.” (Kurtz, 2006) One could define the data body as an embodyment of (personal) information, which is linked to one person.

Haggerty and Ericson (2000) elaborate on a body that is similar to that of the data body. “The observed body is of a distinctively hybrid composition. First it is broken down by being abstracted from its territorial setting. It is then reassembled in different settings through a series of data flows. The result is a de-corporealized body, a ‘data double’ of pure virtuality.” (Haggerty and Ericson 2000:613) They mention the concept of the data body again when they state: “It is not so much immediately concerned with the direct physical relocation of the human body […], but with transforming the body into pure information, such that it can be rendered more mobile and comparable.” (Haggerty and Ericson 2000:613)

evolutionary step

Figure 1. Evolutionary step

The notion of completeness in relation to data bodies has inspired the idea behind this concept. The data body, which is illustrated in figure 1 has a rather negative image, because its troubled relationship with man, technology and society. Troubled, because man could be seen as the shadow of the data body. The shadow connotes the lack of agency over the data body within the realms of control, surveillance, and discipline. The evolutionary step illustrates the evolution of the data body. As shown, the evolution of the data body starts later. It is therefore less evolved, less sophisticated and less complete than that of man. This unsophisticated (caveman) property could be inconvenient for man, because of its impact on daily life. For example, a data body is corrupt, which is the equilivant of an error in a database. As a consequence, the person who is linked to this database is prohibited to travel across boundaries.

There is a theoretical solution to fear of the impact that data bodies could have. The completion of the data body. How? There should be a mutual trust between government and citizens. On the one hand, should the government agree to full transparency towards the aggregation and recording of personal information. On the other hand, should the citizen agree to partly give up his/her privacy. Technology should be the key for making sure the data body is complete and in that way sophisticated enough to resemble man.

References:

  • Haggerty, K.D., Ericson, R. V. (2000). The Surveillance Assemblage. British Journal of Sociology, 51,(4),(pp. 605-622).
  • Hall, Stuart (1994). Cultural Identity and Diaspora in Colonial Discourse and Post Colonial Theory. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (Eds). Cambridge: Harvester Wheatsheaf. (pp. 394).
  • Kurtz, S. (2006). Essay: Utopian Promises – Net Realities (http://www.well.com/user/hlr/texts/utopiancrit.html), 14 mei
  • WBP, Wet Bescherming Persoonsgegevens. (Dutch Privacy Act of personal data) (2006).http://www.cbpweb.nl/downloads_wetten/WBP.PDF?refer=true&theme=purple
January 30, 2010 | Bas Bisseling | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Latent Remixability

Latent control on the distributon of music

Latent control on the distributon of music

(Engels)

In the early days, photography was solely predestined for the Photographer. This skilled worker governed both the analogue camera as the development of its negatives. The dawn of the digitale age introduced a less labor intensive way to produce a photograph. Anyone who could handle a digital camera, computer and a printer is able to be a photographer and reproduce art.

The conventional developing process is replaced by a digital one and the barriers of the complex analogue process are gone. Digitalizing infrastructures and universalizing protocols will result in the fact that numerous devices can communicate with one another. An universal language which is based on binary code. This has advantages for distribution, speed and the amount of information send, but has also implications. A reduction of an analogue to binary code will influence form, purpose and content of the archetype. From 2003 to 2008, Sony BMG had to deal with different lawsuits regarding a policy to secretly implement rootkit software for customers of their content to prohibit its reproduction. Secretly implementing information which alters its manifested purpose is related to what I have coined: ‘latent remixability’. Issues that I am going to scrutinize in my thesis are the layers behind latent remixability. How does latent remixability fit into contemporary society? Which roles do new cultural forms play? What does copyright and original content actually mean within the era of endless reproductivity and endless remixability? How does this fit into a Foucauldian or Deleuzian perspective, or both, and where does Alexander Galloway come in?

Download here my paper on the topic of latent remixability. (still in Dutch)

January 7, 2010 | Bas Bisseling | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

project: MyDatabody, visualizing the network

(Engels)

A growing amount of personal information about a growing amount of people becomes publicly available online. When Google-ing someone’s name, it’s normal these days that a whole list of data pops up that could consist of, among others: career related data, past activities, holiday pictures, blogging and commenting, Social Network (SN) profile data, etc. At first it were merely youngsters that have been familiar with using the internet their whole life that did not really care about privacy (or did not realize the importance) and put all their information out there, available and for grabs for everybody. Not long ago also older generations have joined in and are uploading more and more personal content to the web. These are some interesting trends that will probably become more prominent in the near future.

This project has aimed at creating new insights in this phenomenon of publicly available online personal data. After a first brainstorm session about the current situation of peoples’ ‘online lives’, we all agreed that the visualization that we were supposed to develop would have to serve several relevant goals. First of all we wanted to enhance people’s awareness about privacy online, not by condemning their behavior, but by visualizing something and leave the judgment to the users themselves. A second and very important goal which is closely related to the first is that our visualization must give insights in the amount and extensiveness of people’s data online. As a result our visualization will provide people with the possibility to compare different groups of internet users. So our application provides people with interesting new insights in the different ways people use MySpace. With this application we can create insights in how users with specific cultural or demographic characteristics use MySpace in a different way.
After discussing the subject of personal data available online and putting it together with the goals, we started going through possible ways of visualizing our ideas. It did not take long before we were all very enthusiastic about a metaphoric visualization that could show ones detailed and personal publicly available data. The idea originated from a theory: the data body. A data body is all the data available online of someone. It can exist of for instance: background information, comments, interests, general info, etc. In the case of our visualization the data body is everything that is filled in on a MySpace profile.
We got even more enthusiastic about our idea when we did a brief desk research on the concept data body or applications and visualizations available online that depict somebody’s profile extensiveness. It turned out that most of the SN’s we knew did not have any indication for the completeness. Some of the SN’s we looked at indicate the completeness by a percentage. In the most innovative case (LinkedIn) we found the profile completeness depicted in a bar chart. After this finding and some more brainstorm sessions we were all very confident to take our

confident to take our idea to the next level; we decided to make the depiction interactive, give it a global touch, and even make it social by depicting a user with geographical (inter)related friends. Also, we agreed on the form of our application; we were going to make a widget that would trigger people to click on and play with.

Based on all our initial thoughts, desk research findings, and early conceptualizing we have set up the following problem statement for his project:
“No visualization tool/plugin exists to visualise a so-called data body of a person’s profile on a social network”
We will tackle this problem by firstly describing all relevant theory. This includes theory on social networks in general, online identity theory, network theory, and theory concerning the data body. Secondly we will describe the functional design of our application. In this part a detailed overview of MyDataBody is provided. Subsequently after the theory and functional design we will explain the major design choices we have made during the conceptualizing stage of our project.

During the process of conceptualizing and reading the relevant theory we also started setting up a scraper to collect as many MySpace profiles as possible. This process and the structuring of the raw data is described in the Implementation chapter. Finally before the conclusion we describe how we have actually built MyDataBody and for who the application is potentially relevant.

This concept document came about in a professional get together with Maya Aujla, Daphne Ben Shachar, Piet Walraven, James Mostert, Bram Slits and myself.

December 10, 2009 | Bas Bisseling | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

Google's Street View needs a conscience

(Engels)

Google has launched the Street View application in The Netherlands. This is another phase in Google’s mission to organise the world’s information by building a 3D-environment. Simon Davies, a surveillance watchdog, stated: “The cultural imperative within Google is anti-privacy”. From his perspective that is certainly the case, but then they probably would follow a different strategy (figure below).

Google's alternative anti-privacy strategy.

Google's alternative anti-privacy strategy.

To regulate its content, Google uses a bottom-up approach of self-regulation. As Cherian George states on the bottom-up model: “[As] bloggers keep an eye over readers’ comments appended to their posts. Popular sites heavy with pictorial or video content, such as YouTube, have their own rules forbidding salacious material.(…) With the evolution of new technology, it is neither practical nor is there need for the state to play the role of a master moderator. (George)”

The bottom-up approach is very pragmatic in a sense that it is the only realistic way for regulation. Simply because, the effort to control its vast amount of ever changing content would be, in a top-down manner, an extremely labour intensive and costly practice. Even Google doesn’t have the resources to bring this into practice. So, Google uses a different strategy which is called: ‘flagging’ . The online Youtube community can get rid of inappropriate and sensitive video material by marking it as such.

The difference between YouTube’s approach and Google’s Street View approach, is the source which is generating the content. YouTube’s content is generated by its users, while Street View’ content is generated by its own apparatus. Because of the shear size of the content, regulation is mosty done by the user. From a psycho-analytical perspective, this relation between Street View and the user is rather disturbing, because the former lacks a proper conscience and the latter has to compensate this. So, when somebody stumbles upon a privacy sensitive image, he or she should be its conscience and flag it!

Google's imperative culture of anti-privacy?

Google's imperative culture of anti-privacy?

Microsoft’s Photosynth also forms a 3D-environment, but it’s based on user generated content. Photo’s taken by individuals are uploaded to a server. Here, Photosynth takes over and stitches the photo’s, taken in the same location, together to form a 3D environment of that area. If everyone would upload their images, then, in time (like Google’s Street View), a whole 3D representation of the world could be created. Except, this world is created by the users, instead of a hegemonic company like Google. Even though, we would regulate that space bottom-up. I would rather regulate a world made by users, then by a corporation without a clear conscience.

an alternative 3D representation of the world

an alternative 3D representation of the world

November 19, 2009 | Bas Bisseling | Tags: , | No Comments »

Concept: IWAGU

(Engels)

IWAGU is pronounced as: ‘I Wag You’ and stands for Identification by Webcam And Gesture Utilization. Not to be confused with ‘I kill you’. Lawrence Lessig mentions in his ‘Code V2′ the ‘architectures of identification’. He (Lessig 2006 p.42) states that we constantly are negotiating processes of authentication in real life, and in this process, better technologies and better credentials enable more distant authentication. In real space anonymity has to be created, in cyberspace anonymity is the given (Lessig 2006 p.45).

Contemporary methods of negotiating ones true identity is established by methods as fingerprint reading and password recognition. CAPTCHA is a contemporary technique to make sure that the object of identification is human not a computer program. This process is based on the underdeveloped property of computer programs to interpret images. We, as humans, are perfectly able to extract text from gibberish. As far as one is able to see and is able to distinguish colors.

I would suggest IWAGU as a (new?) method for identification. As far as I am concerned this concept doesn’t exist yet. It should be a fairly simple method to integrate into the daily life of the computer user (PC, MAC, smart phone) and the contemporary verification software. In the next scenario, I will try to explain the workings of this concept.

Scenario.

Imagine you turn on the computer (PC, MAC or smart phone) and after the operating system is loaded the system asks you to sit still and mimic a random gesture. You raise your right hand and show three fingers, just as the system would ask. Now the system uses the webcam to capture in high resolution your face accompanied by your gesture. Next, it determines your identity by comparing the distinct features of your face with the identifying features stored in the system’s database. (The technique to abstract the distinctive facial features is not yet determined. Maybe we can be inspired by Ed Ulbrich’s method.) The random gesture is to make sure this image capture is live and not a recording. After the required gesture is also confirmed positive, you will be able to get access to your personal files. If you’re trying to login to a website, this procedure will be repeated.

Advantage of IWAGU:

One of the advantages of this system compared to a biometric fingerprint is the fact that most of us have a video recording device (webcam) and a few of us have a fingerprint reader on the computer. This procedure will only take a few seconds.

Disadvantage of IWAGU:

Devices:

Not all devices are capable of capturing video. My iPhone does have a camera, but it is not capable of recording video. Ones, every computer is connected to a video camera, then, this concept is likely to work.

Privacy:

The recording of biometric information linked to an individual is fairly controversial. Thus, privacy is an issue. To overcome this issue, it’s necessary to make this personal information accessible to the person who it belongs to. But, then we are back to where we came from, because how do we now for sure that your are the person you claim to be…

For now, this method of negotiating identification or IWAGU beta is perfectly as an alternative or an addition for contemporary identification methods.

(Source)

October 6, 2009 | Bas Bisseling | Tags: , , , | No Comments »
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