TYBI: Your Brain on FutureWeb

I was unable to attend the FutureWeb conference, but thankfully this conference on the Web is…on the web. A large amount of the material regarding the conference is available on the WWW in a variety of formats, such as YouTube videos, near-real-time blog posts, photographs, Twitter posts, etc. As an aside, before getting into some of the topics covered at the WWW2010, it is important to mention that these days, almost all technology-related conferences and talks are readily available online (the TED talks are a great example); others still – such as the HASTAC 2010 conference – are fully virtual. In class, we discussed the possibilities (and potential existing) uses of Second Life as a meeting place. It will be interesting to see how technology is used to involve more people in more places in commentary as well as active dialogue.

As to the topics discussed, danah boyd’s keynote talk about ‘big data on the web’ – in other words, making sense of the huge amount of information available on the Internet, as well as understanding where to draw the boundaries regarding personal information. Data on the web is not limited to Wikipedia articles or listings on eBay – it also incorporates the lives of the millions of people who invest themselves in social media, whether that is sharing their interests on Facebook, Twitter updates, or blogging. Some of this data is meant for wide access, some should not be, but the boundaries are not clear (and the means to control data transfer are not always in place). boyd makes a very interesting distinction between privacy and privacy settings (i.e. accessibility) – where privacy is a social concept that must be communicated  (and incorporates the social and psychological aspects of data sharing); accessibility is a technical concept, and limiting accessibility is one means for maintaining privacy – but they are not the same thing.

In class, we have touched on similar ideas – in particular with Facebook, but also with Chatroulette and foursquare. The concepts of privacy and data accessibility on the web are important to keep in mind both for developers of future technologies as well as for users of those technologies