Obsessive about Real Identity?
I had started to write this in mid-October but never finished it… and the database crashed at some point while I was in the middle of writing it, losing almost all of the article 
In the mean time, the recent interest in this topic, as well as M Linden’s announcement that they would allow people to register avatars with their real life names, as well as Wallace Linden’s strange article on linking real life data to your avatar, seemed to make everybody write what they thought about this subject, even my dearest friend, Extropia DaSilva. At the same time, the world apparently is moving towards having all your life posted to the public at large with Facebook leading the way, and this is seen as a Good Thing... with only the Alphaville Herald disagreeing. To make things even more interesting, Linden Lab just bought the social networking tool Avatar United, a Facebook clone where you’re not forced to use real names to register and which supposedly will (one day, perhaps) link your profile with your avatar name.
So, well, I recovered what I could from that 3-month article and rewrote the rest… enjoy 
(or not!)
The recent subtle push to increase enterprise and academic acceptance of Second Life® (even though we have to be honest here and remember that SL is 99% residential use, and will very likely always remain like that) has pushed the focus again on identity and privacy; more recently, M Linden’s comments that 2010 would allow people to register avatars with their real name, Wallace Linden’s strange article on real life identity, some SL forum polls, and Linden Lab buying Avatar United, pushed the whole issue back into the foreground — again. It looks and feels like 2007, when Linden lab started to introduce third-party age validation.
Not surprisingly, the stance taken by Facebook on “revealing your real self” might have been a strong incentive for Linden Lab to re-evaluate their policies. Or… perhaps there is more?
One of those reasons has been the push to validate Second Life merchants, in order to turn content theft into the much more serious crime of identity theft or credit card fraud, which — hopefully — will be a stronger deterrent and limit piracy.
The other reason, however, has been for long the “need” for businesses to have an idea with whom they’re dealing with. Also, a few have expressed the idea that relationships can only be formed if you know who’s on the other side of the computer screen. The latter, as said, is not limited to Second Life.
And there is a third reason, which is a bit more obscure and will probably happen “under the hood”. Again, we can point at Facebook and see what it entails.
The Anonymous Internet
Consider the early days of the Internet. You can still notice who are veteran Internauts (do people still remember that stupid name?) by their email addresses. They usually have just three letters before the @ symbol. This was an ancient tradition, before AOL joined up their email systems with the Internet (so, yes, a long time ago!), and people just used the initials of their (real) names to create their email addresses. In those days, there was little thinking about who was who. People — human beings all! — were just three-letter acronyms. You wouldn’t expect to meet most of them anyway: the Internet was global and widespread, and it was far more likely to exchange emails with a colleague in Honolulu than with your roomie — just because that colleague would have access to the Internet, while your roomie was more worried about what to dress for the next party, or watched TV.
The corporate world sort of limited the choices you had in “business emails”. It was felt that email addresses ought to better reflect an employee’s real name. Common abbreviations (when usernames were supposed to have 8 characters or less) was an initial and the last name, or the first name and the initial of the last one, truncated to just 8 characters. Once system administrators finally managed to add more than 8 characters, the trend changed again to the more common format FirstName.LastName@domainname.tld, which is still popular today.
But at the same time, phone numbers (even personal, mobile numbers) remained an arbitrary sequence of numbers. Why? The idea is that you’re supposed to only give your phone number to people you know/trust, and that nobody is supposed to “guess” your phone number unless you wish to do so. It’s not a “technological” limitation: nowadays, there is simply no reason to use “numbers” instead of an acronym or an email address for your phone number. After all, over 4 billion phone numbers are on mobile phones, and all of them are really pocket computers. All of them could use different ways of calling people over the phone. Skype certainly works fine without phone numbers. Yes, we can argue about “legacy compatibility”, but really, “telephoning” seems to try to be compatible with something developed 130 or so years ago… how many 130-year-old telephones are still connected to the telephone network?
To find a person’s phone number, you have to use a directory/index. Most people will be willingly listed on those. Most will also place their phone numbers (and email addresses of course) on business cards, either physical or virtual ones, specially if they’re in business and wish to be “in touch”. Thus, people voluntarily use “nicknames” for the “telephone network” and publish them as part of their “corporate identity”.
All this is deliberately placed between quotes because, well, we don’t usually think about phone numbers that way. The interesting aspect is that, until very recently, you could not make reverse searches on telephone numbers: this means that if you randomly got a phone number out of thin air, you cannot easily find the person it belongs to. Of course, with people voluntarily placing their phone numbers on web sites and social networking tools, it’s highly likely that, sooner or later, Google will indeed index it. But the point still remains: phone numbers do not represent uniquely an “identity”. E-mail addresses — although the recent trends (at least in the corporate world; in the academic world, e-mail addresses like student123@university.edu are still popular) are to put the name as part of the address — in a sense are also a “personal” choice, in the privacy sense of the word: most people will only “reveal” their e-mail addresses to people they know or that they have a personal or professional interest in, and it will not always be “obvious” what your e-mail address is if you don’t give it to others. Similarly, except for professional use, if you receive an e-mail out of the blue, it might not be obvious whom it belongs to: john.smith@gmail.com may be anyone, even someone not called “John Smith” — although it’s quite certain that someone like bill.gates@microsoft.com is, indeed, Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Why is that so? It’s actually a notion of trust transferral. Due to the way the Internet e-mail system actually works, only people inside their own domain are able to set up their e-mail addresses, and it’s highly likely that a company will not create “fake” e-mail addresses for their employees (or at least that’s what we expect not to happen). Granted, although under the .com domain anyone can register any domain name, in practice, due to the threat of litigation, it’s often hard to get another company’s name and use it for illegitimate purposes. (Some countries will not allow anyone but the legitimate trademark owner or company name owner to register for a domain name, and may require formal proof of intellectual property rights over that domain name before it is set up at a country’s registrar.)
So once you trust that a company’s domain name is, indeed, legitimate, you will also trust that an e-mail address from that company will, indeed, be assigned to a legitimate employee of that company. This is a concept that doesn’t exist, say, for phone numbers, which are quasi-randomly assigned (or even if they aren’t, the relationship between the company name with its telephone number is not clear). Personal e-mail addresses, however, have absolutely no relationship with someone’s identity. Nevertheless, we’re prepared to accept an e-mail address as a legitimate identification of a person — often even legally binding. Which might be surprising, since it’s quite easy to forge an e-mail address, or a message coming from a forged e-mail address — it happens every day with the billions of messages sent by spammers.
Similarly, nicknames on IRC and other more primitive forms of online communication, started by being pretty random and anonymous, “funny” monikers. The whole concept of “using your real name” for an IRC nickname was simply ludicrous. What would be the point — except potentially to laugh at a colleague if they just typed something pretty stupid (because, say, they were drunk ) and made a sad figure of themselves? Practical jokesters might be curious about who was behind a nickname, but there was little point beyond that. Unless, of course, we were talking with a criminal (or potential criminal) under surveillance…
The Web curiously was the first place where things started to get a bit blurred. The notion of the “home page” — a place where you put your personal pictures and rant about yourself in narcissistic hedonism — slowly caught on. In the very early days, it was probably the place for your academic resumée (CV), but soon it became the space where you placed what you were interested in. The early Web, being mostly a geek-controlled environment, soon had lots of pages saying what episode of “Star Trek” you liked best, or lists of cheat codes for your favourite game, or how to rewire your computer to get some extra performance from your motherboard.
But parallel to this, companies started to advertise their services on the Web too. And asking you to give them their credit card numbers. Up to that time, people gladly gave their credit cards to complete strangers on shops, but also on phone calls, faxes, or letters. The Web, however, made people still think twice. What if the page I’m seeing is not what I believe it is? Is this “microsoft.com” address really the page for Microsoft? How do I know who is behind that page?
Granted, digital certificates validated by reputable third parties gave people an extra sense of security, meaning that the page they’re seeing is really from the company it claims to be. But obviously just because you have a digital certificate and a page starting with https:// it doesn’t mean that the company is not a fraud. They might be an established company selling fake goods, or double-charging your credit card, or engaging in any kind of illegal business. How could you know? On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog — and even if you show proof you’re a dog, how do I know you’re an honest dog?
(As a side note, this old 1993 cartoon is the reason why most people in my country routinely get credit cards but wouldn’t dream of ever using them on a web site. Such is the power of a cartoon!)
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Oh my, quite a long read again, but as usual a very good read.
I have to make a comment I made very similar on Grace MCDunnoughs blog this morning. Peter Stindberg is a digital person, and for some personal reasons has no connection to the atomic person using the keyboard. A few chosen ones are partial to the identity of the RL person, but for the rest Peter Stindberg only exists in a digital ebvironment.
Still Peter has built a track record and credibility in the last 3,5 years. He has reached a certain visibility and he built a successful business that ranks as the leading one in a certain area. And all this without ever revealing the RL connection to a client. Oh, yes, I have been asked a few times to do so, but I politely refused. I mentioned that my RL identity is on file with LL. One client said he can't do business with me without it – and a few weeks later sent me jobs anyways and not mentioning the request anymore. My reputation and credibility made him chose my business in the end, and not a competitor's who openly gives out RL credentials.
The interesting thing is though that the business Peter Stindberg is in, is not the business the atomic person is in. While Peter Stindberg of course benefits from a general business attitude of the atomic person (funny enough a business sense my peers claim I do not have), he excelled in an area he has no formal qualification for. Would my SL persona be linked to my RL persona, this apparent lack of qualification would become obvious and would have prevented me from starting my business in the first place.
While some people might see this as deception, I rather think it is a prime example of the equalizing effect of NOT linking RL identities. Only in the leveled playing field of the avatars starting out as blank anonymous pages, people can take their second chances. Single mum's can become successful fashion designers. Students can become land barons. Disabled people can become acclaimed live performers. Balding truck drivers can become top sexworkers. The list is endless.
This leveled playing field, this blank table – combined with the meritocraty – is the magic of SL. And in a way, it repeats the promise and the magic of the Frontier, of making your luck in a new country where everybody is equal.
Online worlds offer two challenges to RL assumptions. Their fundamental reality as copyable code challenges the RL assumption of economies driven by scarcity. More relevant to this discussion, the way we can open up multiple screens and project different personaes into each one takes us a step beyond the roleplaying inherent in waking up as a lover, making breakfast as a mother and going to work as a lawyer. Those were roles played at different times and in different settings. But, with our attention flitting from one screen to another, in Sherry Turkle words 'the life practice of Windows is of a decentered self that exists in many worlds at the same time'.
In social theory, psychoanalysis and philosophy, there is the postmodern view of self as fluid, nonlinear, decentered. 'I' is, according to modern theories, a multiplicity, whereas the unitary self is an illusion. But the normal requirements of everyday life exert great pressure on people to see themselves as intentional, unitary actors.
But we should take into consideration that the future will be different to the past in one major respect. In the past, a person expected to live the same life as their grandfather, and that their grandchildren would do the same. When one job is for life it makes sense to shape the mind into a unitary, stable self. But now that no job is for life and we are exposed to different worldviews every day of the week, the co-conscious, fluid, nonlinear multiplicity of self is arguably a fitter state of mind for a fast-changing world.
One MUD user in the 1990s asked the question, 'why grant such superior status to the self that has the body when the selves that don't have bodies are able to have different kinds of experiences'? This challenge to the assumed unitarity of self can be artificially resolved by imposing brickspace constraints on the mind's arguably natural inclination for decentered, multiple selves, just as the code's natural inclination to be freely copied can be constrained by laws. But for how long? Vernor Vinge's observation 'the sense of self itself is in for rough times' is true now, what with lifelike properties emerging in software, and biology recast in terms of deciphering code, and will become truer in the future, whether we choose to place our heads in the sand and ignore this or not.
Harrumpf. There would be still a lot to say, but I have to draw the line somewhere
which I did, after 18000+ words…
I couldn't agree more, Peter! In my mind, the recent trend for “pushing” for more RL credentials in SL comes from happy newcomers that simply have no time nor patience to build up a reputation from scratch, and thus wish to “enjoy the ride” by linking their RL reputation to an avatar.
Their idea is, “oh, I'm already famous and popular in RL, but nobody knows me in SL yet; so I'll 'borrow' my RL reputation and use it in SL too”.
Sadly, it doesn't work that way. No matter how much we can claim that “SL is RL” (which is true), it is also a social grouping with its own norms and values. That means that reputation in SL has a different origin than reputation iRL, no matter which area you come from, simply because it's a different social grouping. This is undeniable
It's like working for McDonald's for a decade and expecting that your good reputation as a hamburger flipper ought to count something when applying for a job as a ballet dancer. Sure, some small things will cross over — e.g. the notion that you're a good, enthusiastic worker and a team player — but most will not.
Well, dearest Extie, I have to disagree with you on one point: “Their fundamental reality as copyable code challenges the RL assumption of economies driven by scarcity.” You're right just because most world economies still give a lot of value to the manufacture of goods out of raw materials which are, indeed, scarce (at least to a degree). However, the money-pushing in the world gravitates around the service industry. When providing services, there are no “goods” and no “materials” that remain “scarce”. Nevertheless, basic economic assumptions remain intact, since there is still a degree of scarcity: scarcity of labour (not everybody in the world can be, say, an architect, simply because not everybody has the required skills for being one), of talent, of quality, of management processes (not everybody works in the same way and delivers the service according to the same parameters), and so on.
These notions of “scarcity” also apply perfectly to work done inside virtual worlds. It's only Prokofy that loves to proclaim that “SL goods are the same as RL goods”, when they are not. SL “goods” are just creative content, nothing else. They're not subject to the laws governing scarcity of material resources, or even property/ownership laws. Instead, the only laws governing “digital goods” are the rules and conventions around creative content (e.g. copyright), which is a service provided by a few talented people to a large community of content consumers.
I agree fundamentally with the rest of your argument. The mere notion that the self is not “unity” but “multiplicity” (because we can experience that directly: when we're drunk/drugged/asleep, our “self” behaves differently than otherwise) tends to point towards the lack of an intrinsically existing self. I'm actually quite happy that modern, contemporary psychology and neuroscience start to support this notion (it's about time they did!). But I also agree that if we start seeing the self as something way less coherent and tied to a specific fixed configuration of grey goo inside our skulls, the question that begs asking is where is the boundary of self. Reputation is how the self is perceived in a specific social group where we participate as an actor (and this definition seems to be rather consensual these days). So using reputation, our “identity”, or at least a part of it, comes from interacting with others, and it is these others that “define” that identity to some point. Thus, we have also to consider an interdependent self, e.g. a self that can only be fully defined when others (“other selves”) apply their labels to it. Starting from this assumption, it begins to make sense that we cannot limit the “definition of self” to, say, physical interaction limited by geography, since communication, these days, is not limited to physical proximity. Reputation in a group acquires a new meaning when that “group” never meets in the flesh — but the reputation still exists.
You could even go on and say, “automated ratings on a website are part of reputation as well”. In a sense, how can we contradict this assumption? A blogger that has one visitor per month has a different reputation than one with, say, 200 visitors per day. When hiring a new contributor to an e-zine, what will be more important: how many people they attract on their own blogs, or what grades they got at school? It's at this boundary that we are today, right now. Second Life is digital, online, and world-wide — it's not a physical space limited to a single geographical point. Thus, how can people still pretend to claim that geographically-bound reputation can be “more important” than the digital reputation? For me, it makes absolutely no sense; I can only explain the “need” to link RL and SL reputation because old habits die hard, but the world is changing — has changed! — and we cannot stick to the past for much longer.
Tying “real life identity” to avatars makes little sense, except (see my comment above to Peter) for the ones too lazy to establish digital reputations, and hoping that their physical in-the-flesh reputation sort of “rubs off” when entering the social online space.
>Well, dearest Extie, I have to disagree with you on one point: “Their fundamental reality as copyable code challenges the RL assumption of economies driven by scarcity.”<
Hmm..yeah, what was it I said in that 'Snowcrashing 2 part 2 essay' from way back?
“the fact that SL’s content has monetary value is not all that suprising when one considers the entire system that supports the likes of Aimee Weber or Fallingwater Celladore. The ability to produce copies of virtual goods does happen automatically with little human intervention, but it’s only automated at one point in the manufacturing process. The design of the goods requires a concentration of effort, promoting the company and its products requires ongoing work. All of this necessitates the coordination of many tasks, and this activity amounts to a dynamic economy which is an essential element in building an online world compelling enough to sustain the interests of millions for indefinite periods”.
So no it is not realistic to want everything for free. Nevertheless, people like Hamlet Au have questioned the extent to which the SL economy is just like RL economies.
As for this tying of RL identity to online identity business, I would like to say that NOT offering the choice to name one's avatar after one's own full real name, or disallowing any other kind of link to RL identity, is as unfair to all those who would choose to do so if they could, as is forcing those of us who choose not to create those links into divulging RL details. Some people I could mention are talking about the introduction of real names in SL as though Mark Kingdon were denying freedom of choice to roleplayers. But, really, under HIS leadership the choice will soon be 'choose your 1st life name, or make up a fantasy name' whereas under Philip Rosedale by and large you could not give your avvie your 1st life full name even if you wanted to. So who was it that denied freedom of choice to the individual?
Similarly, one could read that 'Will The Real You Please Stand Up' post as 'the end is nigh for digital people, but only if one ignore the part where Wallace Linden says “you shouldn't necessarily be forced to make the same associations I do. If you ask most people, making those connections should be opt-in”. Echoing Wallace's words, people should not be forced to disassociate their 2nd life from their 1st life like I do.
Tying real life identity to avatars, the end of privacy…
You know, you can try to avoid entering RL details whenever a website asks for them, but that does not stop certain parties from finding out a great deal about you. For instance, an analysis of your web history over the years, what sites you visited, how long you spent at each one, what queries you entered into search engines, would enable certain data mining tools to infer pretty accurately your real gender, your real social status, and your real nationality. Frankly, citing CTV cameras everywhere and pervasive online requests for RL identification is not the stuff of a 21st century Big Brother. No, that would be comprised of an omnipresent, all-knowing surveillance system comprised of myriads of smaller software apps and hardware devices whose privacy-breaking potential only emerges when you can keep track of billions of interconnected links. Computers can do that, but people cannot. All people would see are handy technologies and software tools that make life more convenient.
One last thing, Gwyn mentioned an essay of mine and said I was moved to write it because of Wallace Linden's post. Actually, it was a reply to the post 'Real Discrimination Against Digital People' by Stephen Coebb that prompted my 'Anonymous Avatars And Digital People' essay.
Oh yes, you're right: it would be nice to have an option to use a real surname (since real first names is easy
). Two questions pop to mind: if there are no checks, and I register my name as “Hillary Clinton”, how will people know that I'm not Hillary Clinton? We are assuming that a new flag will appear on the profile saying: “this avatar has shown Linden Lab their ID and we can confirm that this is their real name”. This is pretty much what some people wish to avoid: discrimination based on that flag. The current method does not allow a choice of surnames at all (except if you're a certified media celebrity, then LL will allow, for a fee, to register your own name).
Not having a flag actually mirrors what happens in the real world. If I go to a location and claim to be, say, Jane Doe, people will take that it's my real name. If someone has any doubts, they can ask for my ID (and depending on the country I live in, this request might be acceptable or not
). Similarly, people ought to be allowed to have any choice of first and last name, but validation, if required for some reason, ought to be optional and handled outside SL. There is no “discrimination” that way.
This, however, has a potential problem. What happens when two people wish to register “Jane Doe” as their real names? Who'll get first pick? One might say, well, let's do it like DNS registrations in the US: the first to register gets the name, the second will simply have to sue to make a counter-claim. However, there is a difference between domain names and real names! If you cannot use your real name in SL because someone else has the same name as you and has registered first, you're being discriminated against: you've lost the right to use your own name when dealing with other people, and I'm quite sure this is illegal under most jurisdictions.
In RL, this problem doesn't exist, since different people are definitely allowed to have the same name…
Oh, and my apologies. That “introduction” on the article was written and rewritten three times, over as many months, and definitely gives out the wrong idea. Your essay predates Wallace's post for at least three weeks.
>I register my name as “Hillary Clinton”, how will people know that I'm not Hillary Clinton?<
The other day, I thought I would send a friend request to Hamlet Au on Avatars United. Searching his name revealed there are TWO Hamlet Aus. Our Hamlet has blogged about this. See http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2010/02/avatars-disuni...
>If I go to a location and claim to be, say, Jane Doe, people will take that it's my real name.<
Reminds me of a great in-joke in an episode of the Simpsons. Bart is on the phone to someone, and Homer wants to know that person's own phone number. Bart repeats the digits: “555…”
At which point Homer mutters, 'well THAT is obviously fake'.
In case you do not get the joke, whenever a phone number is featured in a TV drama in America, it always begins 555…Because that is a code signyfying the number is for a fictional show and not connected to any RL person or organization.
Why do I bring that up? Because it seems kind of comical that people would believe a person's real name is 'Jane Doe', when it is well known that 'Jane (or John) Doe' is the name American cops give to every person whose real identity has not yet been established.
But, it is quite possible that many people happen to have the name Gwyneth Llewelyn. Would they all be able to call their avatars 'Gwyneth Llewelyn'? Seems more likely that only your avvie would have that name, and all others would have to add Lewellyn42 or some other modification.
Matrioshka cultists need to realise that Humanity, in principle, will never accept their 'new world' totalitarian order. Quick surveys/discussions (that I've done over the last few months) reveal that it's the older generation – specifically the ones who haven't had fulfilling lives – are the ones who are very likely included in the totalitarian 'new world' order. Looking for the Holy Grail, so to speak.
Everyone's going to be able to live their dream life. Radical non-Matrioshka Life extensions are going to be available. Space exploration – Mars and beyond. Living in an *actual* Pandora-like setting, instead of some forever-looping synthesized environment.
Despite what Matrioshka cultists preach, individuality matters. A lot. Common tasks are often divided up into pieces and worked on by individuals, instead of one single person doing all the work, for instance.
Obsessive about Identity? Yes, we should be. We shouldn't let cultists who throw their 'inevitability' around to dominate and control us. We shouldn't let corporates like Google profile our every single move (sign out of Google when using web search!). We shouldn't let companies like Linden Research oust our livelihoods and credentials by force-feeding us policies and changes that we were never in favor of.
Philip's speech to young Matrioshka Cultists emphasized the importance of privacy on the internet, but then he talks about how he wants to use Facebook Connect to *earn more money* etc etc etc. It's all about *Money*, not improving people's Lifestyles.
Vote with your feet, people! People use screen names on forums, gaming sites, networking sites etc, for a reason.
Move so-called “content theft” to some sort of fraud or criminal activity? Maybe you need to consult with some real lawyers and real law enforcement people before writing that sort of ridiculous stuff. All Linden Lab is doing is retracting commerce to a select few so their friends can make more money for the substandard content they hawk. And there is nothing Linden Lab or anyone can do about people taking personal copies of anything they please except by ending user generated content and/or change to cloud rendering frame stream delivery. This identity crap has nothing to do with the propaganda being served by LL sock puppets and in general the entire Stanford mindset. Identities with a CC# fetch $100 each on the identity theft market according to published reports. This recent surge of anti privacy propaganda by the west coast Maoist/Che worshiping crowd is all about money and keeping the identity theft business cruising at full speed IMHO. And these west coast dorks don't even know the people they worship murdered more people than Hitler. but apparently Stanford doesn't teach the real version of history.
>Matrioshka cultists need to realise that Humanity, in principle, will never accept their 'new world' totalitarian order….
We shouldn't let cultists who throw their 'inevitability' around to dominate and control us. We shouldn't let corporates like Google profile our every single move (sign out of Google when using web search!<
“I am continually shocked and apalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves”- John Cullus, Chief Security Officer PGP.
The Cullus quote suggests that, far from there being a general fear of privacy loss, people are quite happy to tell all and sundry about themselves. In the past, extensive blogging was frustrated by storage. A person could easily run out of space and so they had to delete old stuff to make space for new. We are fast approaching an age when storage is so massive, every moment of a person's life (all they see, hear, read, and say) for 100 years could be stored.
Nowadays, the problem has become one of finding what you want, when you want. Frankly, the more search software knows about you (your age, your gender, where you live, what prior knowledge you have, FAQs you have submitted in the past, what your emotional response to any given situation is….) the better it gets at delivering the right kind of knowledge at the right time.
I seriously doubt that everyone would want have their whole life automatically blogged, but I expect enough people will be uploading enough audio,text and video files to make much more effective search tools a must-have accessory. I would not say such things are inevitable. It all depends on whether or not the likes of Google can convince us, each step along the way, that the next advance is worth the loss of a certain amount of privacy in exchange for certain benefits and conveniences.
>Obsessive about Identity? Yes, we should be.<
I expect this will be one of, if not THE, major issues of the 21st century.
> “enough people will be uploading enough audio,text and video files to make much more effective search tools a must-have accessory”
People need to be educated on how to use search engines properly – just like teaching database admins to fine-tune their queries for optimal (or maximum) performance.
> “Frankly, the more search software knows about you (your age, your gender, where you live, what prior knowledge you have, FAQs you have submitted in the past, what your emotional response to any given situation is….) the better it gets at delivering the right kind”
Strange… Google, Bing etc often finds exactly what *I* want, after going through a couple search results pages – without said search engines building up a profile based on my prior search history.
> “It all depends on whether or not the likes of Google can convince us, each step along the way, that the next advance is worth the loss of a certain amount of privacy in exchange for certain benefits and conveniences”
'Benefits' and 'Convenience' is a lie, since you get near-accurate search results *anyway*.
Speaking of which, Google's Golf Caddy search ad was one of their most ridiculous ads. Who in their right minds would search for 'Golf' instead of 'Golf Caddy', when it is the latter they are looking for?
“do no EVIL”… Yeah, Right.
> “I expect this will be one of, if not THE, major issues of the 21st century”
There's absolutely *nothing* to discuss. AI's can't be classed as 'human', no matter how real they may seem. People will continue to use screen names to express themselves with more creativity. Individuality will remain intact, with dwindling Matrioshka Cultists living alongside mentally ill griefers in the last remnant of “second life”. Until the last remaining server overheats and dies, of course
Vote with your feet, people! Matrioshka Cultists should NOT be able to dominate, bully and control us with their coming 'inevitability'!
>People need to be educated on how to use search engines properly – just like teaching database admins to fine-tune their queries for optimal (or maximum) performance.<
That sounds like the 'Eliza Effect' to me, in which a person dumbs down their intelligence in order to compensate for the limited capability of an AI (it is named after the ELIZA psychotherapist bot, to which many people constrained their 'conversations' in order to avoid situations in which it responded in an unrealistic way). Yes, Google has improved since the days when a search for 'cure cancer' was as likely to bring up the blog of some kid whose fave band is 'The Cure' and whose starsign is 'Cancer', but there is still a lot of room for improvement. For instance, I doubt if search engines are able to:
Reason outside the current context.
Compare and contrast two or more representations for consistency/inconsistency.
Reason anologically.
learn and use symbols whose meaning are defined in terms of other learned symbols.
Invent and learn terms for relations as well as things.
I could go on and on listing things an AI cannot yet do, but which humans do very well. Any search engine that aquired one or more of these capabilities would perform better than those that lack it. You might be happy with an inferior search engine, but how many others would be too?
>Strange… Google, Bing etc often finds exactly what *I* want, after going through a couple search results pages – without said search engines building up a profile based on my prior search history. <
Does it really? Or does it offer up several websites that might contain what you are looking for, plus a whole bunch of other stuff that is of no interest to you right now, leaving you to sift through all the irrelevent info in order to find what you need? Does it tailor information to your skill level and prior knowledge, avoiding that which you know already, that which is currently beyond your technical level, delivering instead information custom-built to be understandable and informative to you personally?
Of course, if Google is good enough for you, it need not improve any further, at least as far as you are concerned. But often, people assume something is good enough only until something better comes along and raises their expectations.
>There's absolutely *nothing* to discuss. AI's can't be classed as 'human', no matter how real they may seem. People will continue to use screen names to express themselves with more creativity. Individuality will remain intact, with dwindling Matrioshka Cultists living alongside mentally ill griefers in the last remnant of “second life”. Until the last remaining server overheats and dies, of course
<
I agree with most of this. Not sure about *there is nothing to discuss'. Questions about identity have been a staple of philosophical speculation since at least the time of Socrates, and questions about identity theft, roleplaying and other aspects of life on the screen raise many questions. Nothing to discuss? Hardly. As for 'an AI will never be a human' I agree. But, just maybe, some AIs will be treated like a person.
>Vote with your feet, people! Matrioshka Cultists should NOT be able to dominate, bully and control us with their coming 'inevitability'!<
I have said, on many occasions, that the future is not on an inevitable path to some well-defined end. We can only talk of probabilities, what is likely, less likely, unlikely, very unlikely to happen. I do not know why you keep bringing 'inevitability' up, frankly.
A Search Engine isn't a personal assistant – completely unrelated to Artificial Intelligence. It's purpose is to index the available data and store it, for retrieval at a later point in time.
Mining and re-organising the collected data – now, that's a completely different story.
In other news, the 'Do No Evil', 'Let's be 100% open and transparent' and 'You can *trust* us 100%' Google hires the NSA to do some things for them. I wonder, how much information would Google reveal publicly , about the little arrangement. My guess is, Google isn't going to reveal much, except minor bits here and there via the press. Making Google's so-called 'openness and transparency plans' a mere marketing, moneymaking ruse.
————–
> “That sounds like the 'Eliza Effect' to me, in which a person dumbs down their intelligence”
Dumbing down their intelligence? Not really. Getting the most out of the SEARCH (not data mining) tools out there.
> “I do not know why you keep bringing 'inevitability' up, frankly.”
People do, and will continue to use 'inevitability' to dominate, bully and control man kind. Especially Cultists.
Vote with your feet, people! Retain Individuality!
>A Search Engine isn't a personal assistant – completely unrelated to Artificial Intelligence. It's purpose is to index the available data and store it, for retrieval at a later point in time.<
That may be true of current search engines, but Google's Director Of Research, Peter Norvig, says 'in 50 years the scene will be transformed. Instead of typing a few words into a search engine, people will discuss their needs with a digital intermediary, which will offer suggestions and refinements. The result will not be a list of links, but an annotated report (or a simple conversation) that synthesizes the important points, with references to the original literature”.
And Usama Fayyad, Senior Vice President of Research at Yahoo, said “With more knowledge about where you are, what you are like, and what you are doing at the moment… the better we will be able to deliver relevant information when people need it”.
There could well be a positive feedback loop between the two, because the more useful information about people's behavior you feed to a learning AI, the better it gets at modelling their minds and inferring their intentions. The better it gets at modelling minds and inferring intentions, the better it gets at finding useful information about people's behaviour.
Even if search engines do not evolve into digital intermediaries that further develop into AIs with interpersonal and social skills, the TANSTAAFL rule applies to all those 'free' software services available for download. They are not really free, we pay for such things by giving up a bit of our privacy. We will continue to do so for as long as the service providers can convince us that the benefits of their software/hardware outweighs the intrusion into our personal space.
> “finding useful information about people's behaviour”
People's behavior? Only Psychologists and Therapists would bother looking up information like that. And nosy employers who want to find out what their prospective employees were doing in the past, etc.
> “We will continue to do so for as long as the service providers can convince us that the benefits of their software/hardware outweighs the intrusion into our personal space”
Not true. Companies will con us into believing that they're doing all this for “us” (including back deals with the NSA, for a group which is starting to actively promote trust, openness and 100% transparency). Some (mindless) people will fall for it 100%, a few will experiment with it and the rest will avoid it entirely.
Purely because the companies haven't been *honest* about EVERYTHING.
More 'inevitability', more hot air. Nothing else. Remember folks: Individuality matters. Playing guineapig to a *commercial entity* is absolutely foolish, like scrounging around for cubic zirconias and 'fool's gold'. Trust and Accountability will probably play a *big* part this century.
Vote with your feet, people!
>Not true. Companies will con us into believing that they're doing all this for “us” (including back deals with the NSA, for a group which is starting to actively promote trust, openness and 100% transparency). Some (mindless) people will fall for it 100%, a few will experiment with it and the rest will avoid it entirely.<
The only successful cons are the ones that 'con'vince people to fall for the propoganda. You are correct in saying that not everybody adopts a technology. There are always those that opt out. But how many people have a mobile phone, and how many of those realise the device can be used to track your current location within a few tens of meters using triangulation? How many people use Twitter, and how many of those consider Steven Levy's discovery that “no matter how innocuous your individual tweets, the aggregate ends up being a scary-deep self portrait”?
Or how about Amazon, 'Yahoo People Search' and 'Google Maps'? Computer Consultant Tom Owad showed what you can do when you use the three in combination:
“Mash book wishlists posted by Amazon users with Google Maps. The wishlists often contain the user’s full name, as well as the city and state in which they live — enough to find their full street address from a search site like Yahoo People Search. That’s enough to get a satellite image of their homes from Google Maps”.
These are not services used by a few braindeads that are untouched by the majority. These are massively mainstream services, happily used by people who probably do not realise their privacy has been compromised.
>More 'inevitability', more hot air. Nothing else.<
What are you talking about? I said people will use 'free' software apps and pay for them with the loss of a certain amount of privacy, but only so long as the companies get the risk/reward ratio correct. If they get it wrong, people will indeed 'vote with their feet'. There is nothing that speaks of inevitability here, although I place a very high probabilility that people will continue to sacrifice a negligible amount of privacy and personal information in return for improved web services and free apps.
> “risk/reward ratio correct”
You see, not everyone believes that it's absolutely fine to perform subconscious experiments on the largely ignorant population. Prod/poke here (without notifying the participant they're involved in the experiment), repeat, repeat until humanity is extinct!
While handing out worthless 'candy' along the way, as bait.
Speaking of which, I have decided *not* to get involved in Mark Kingdon's Social Networking website experiment. Why play guineapig to a company which dishes out customer crippling changes and policies? Not to mention the fruitless Linden Transparency announcement. Kinda reminds me of Google (cept Google hasn't rolled out *that* many crippling changes yet, as far as I'm aware of).
> “how many of those consider Steven Levy's discovery that “no matter how innocuous your individual tweets, the aggregate ends up being a scary-deep self portrait”?
Um, that's an *obvious* (and totally irrelevant) point. Diaries, Blogs and 140-word (micro)blogging services all have that in common.
> “You are correct in saying that not everybody adopts a technology”
You're missing the point here. Google's telling everyone that it isn't evil, that it can be trusted. At the same time, Google is content to hand over every piece of data they've collected in their 10+ years of operation via a Secret inspection deal with the NSA, who are probably going to analyze every piece of public/private information on Google's servers while they're at it. Why bother handing out large scale Openness/Transparent adverts if you're going to hand all your equipment and data to Top-secret surveillance agencies?
—–
Vote with your feet, People!
>>> “how many of those consider Steven Levy's discovery that “no matter how innocuous your individual tweets, the aggregate ends up being a scary-deep self portrait”?
Um, that's an *obvious* (and totally irrelevant) point. Diaries, Blogs and 140-word (micro)blogging services all have that in common.<
A reread of Gwyn's article shows that services like Twitter are, in fact, very relevant to the point I am making about the 21st Century surveillance system, disguised as thousands of useful little apps and devices, any one, tens or hundreds of which require a neglible amount of privacy loss.
“Data about consumers' habits is valuable…Now that we can link what people think and say about themselves to their location and the date they did something, the profiling data at the disposal of marketing agencies increased tremendously”.
And a recent NewScientist article stated:
“THAT the internet is the same for everyone, wherever they are, is one of its defining features. But increasingly your location matters, and will alter what you see online.
Two events last week offer a preview of the web's location-aware future. Social network Twitter started telling users the most talked-about topics in their vicinity. Meanwhile, Canadian newspaper publisher Metro teamed up with location-based social network Foursquare to offer users restaurant reviews based on their GPS-enabled phone's location.
Those may seem small changes, but they mean people's web experience is becoming inextricably linked with where they are, not just who they are…
…While location-based services have been tried before – typically from businesses looking to advertise their wares – what is significant today “is the intent”, says Bedi. Users are actively sharing their location as a way to specify the information they want to receive, whether restaurant reviews or the most-shared gossip in their city.
Advertisers may gain too, but for now the growth of the location-based web depends on users' appetite for new ways to filter their online experience”.
So clearly, Twitter and its ilk are entirely relevant. Of course, it is not inevitable that this kind of service will become mainstream. But it is hardly beyond the realms of possibility that people might come to prefer searches that automatically take into account location and other information gleaned from social networking tools. As Gwyn said, better to be confronted by an advert designed around your personal preferences than an inbox full of random spam.
Here is a list of devices that raised concerns over privacy loss circa 1900:
Microphones.
Cameras.
Radio.
Telephones.
Doorbells.
Judging by the sheer proliferation of these things, one can assume that privacy downsides associated with these technologies were either addressed with laws or conventions, or understood and accepted by the public. If a set of circumstances becomes acceptable, you can then push for a little more privacy loss, sweetened with another load of innovations that are successfully promoted as being genuinely worth adopting (if not then the technology comes to nothing or just stays on the fringes). Today, nobody gives the potential invasion of privacy loss caused by a doorbell a second thought. In the future, much the same might be true of apps that we would treat with the utmost suspicion.
> ” push for a little more privacy loss, sweetened with another load of innovations that are successfully promoted as being genuinely worth adopting”
> ” Today, nobody gives the potential invasion of privacy loss [...] a second thought”
Yet another boring, circular statement from the Matrioshka “inevitability” cultist, with his subtle “forget privacy, it's a thing of the past!” message.
I'm sure you've read in the news lately, that people are deactivating their GoogBuzz accounts en masse because of past/current/future Privacy issues?
Once people realise the severity of the issue – in this case, the severe loss of privacy from doubletalking companies like Google, they're going to stop interacting with the product (and possibly move away from the company completely, if such cases persist.
Location-based services are NOT linked to identity, even though you can share your location on Social Networking websites. Therefore they do not affect your privacy – unlike some of the more Rouge services out there — services designed explicitly to erode privacy by subconsciously gathering personal information – including your habits and emotions.
Microphones, Cameras, Radio and Telephones pose radically different risks (Verification and Distribution of information, stealing vital information from enemies).
Bells provide no privacy risk whatsoever – even those linked to a camera. Rather, camera-linked doorbells fall under the 'Verification' section, where the (home)owner wants to see if the man (or woman) standing in front of the entrance is someone they can trust (friend, police with ID at hand etc). The whole point of knocking on someone's door, is to talk to the homeowner, or occupants, inside. Face to face.
Regarding Twitter's Location-based notification services – you shouldn't need to manually change your preferences to view trending topics from other areas. Nice example of reverse-innovation from companies.
The *educated* aren't going to simply throw their privacy away for cubic zirconia trinkets (or even real diamonds).
Vote with your feet, people! The Principle Values of Privacy isn't going to change one bit, in future times.
Those who disagree with this statement should start exposing themselves *right now* by posting their Real Life details on the Blog Comments – including their RL Name, RL Photos, Birthdate, Address, Home phone number, Mobile Phone Number, Drivers License/Passport ID number (state which type first), income, job type, Employer's details (and the personal details about everyone working in your workspace/company), private conversation with friends, family, workmates, loved ones and so on. Every little detail of your identity/life for EVERYONE to see!
The scope ultimately goes beyond advertisements and revenue, gearing towards the fascist revolution. As predicted in one of C.S. Lewis's texts – 'A Preface to Paradise Lost'.
Even Personal Blogs and Social Networking sites aren't *that* concise. Vote with your feet, People!
>> ” Today, nobody gives the potential invasion of privacy loss [...] a second thought”<
This abrigded quote grossly distorts my message. I never said nobody today gives privacy loss a second thought. Rather, I said that technologies that raised concerns over privacy loss in the past are generally accepted today, and that therefore technologies that raise concerns over privacy today may be accepted tomorrow.
>Vote with your feet, people! The Principle Values of Privacy isn't going to change one bit, in future times.
Those who disagree with this statement should start exposing themselves *right now* by posting their Real Life details on the Blog Comments – including their RL Name, RL Photos, Birthdate, Address, Home phone number, Mobile Phone Number, Drivers License/Passport ID number (state which type first), income, job type, Employer's details (and the personal details about everyone working in your workspace/company), private conversation with friends, family, workmates, loved ones and so on. Every little detail of your identity/life for EVERYONE to see! <
Of course if people were asked to divulge all their personal details in one go, few would do as they are told. But a surveillence state does not require this sudden abandonment of privacy in order to come to fruitition. All it requires is the acceptance to divulge SOMETHING, and it does not matter how negligible that 'something' is.
The reason why is because technology builds upon itself to create a cummulative effect. So, people are persuaded to install phones in their house, then to connect their computers to the telecommunications network, then to click on hyperlinks, enter keywords into search engines, write blogs and comments, upload geotagged images to maps and photo sharing sites….
True, mouseclicking on a single hyperlink, or typing a few words into a search engine reveals an infintessimal amount of personal detail. Not enough to worry about, certainly. But once you have done that, it probably gets logged in a database somewhere, and once enough of a person's web activity is logged, all those tens of thousands of pageviews, mouseclicks, search queries, comments etc etc etc , at some point it all starts to add up to a fairly extensive personal profile THAT YOU NEVER EVEN REALISED YOU WERE HELPING TO COMPILE!
Sure, people will reject certain technologies. But that changes little, so long as they continue to adopt others that carry that risk/reward inherent in giving away a little bit of personal details. If you can convince people to reveal 1% about themselves, and do that consistently for 100 rounds of technological development, they will divulge 1%..another 1%…another..until before they even realise it, 100% of their personal details have been obtained or can be correctly inferred via sophisticated data-mining techniques.
Also, a trick of technpolitics is to officially drop a technology that provokes a big negative reaction (yes, public influence has blocked technologies in the past, and will do so again in the future), only to ressurrect it, recycle it, rebrand it, until gains acceptance.
>The scope ultimately goes beyond advertisements and revenue, gearing towards the fascist revolution. As predicted in one of C.S. Lewis's texts – 'A Preface to Paradise Lost'.<
Right. But it will not be delivered by Jackboot-wearing officials setting up CCTV cameras in all spaces and demanding we give away all our personal details or else. It will be delivered in the guise of countless useful apps and devices combined with promotions that convince enough people that the negligble compromise to their privacy and personal space is worth it for the opportunities these gadgets will open up.
> “technologies that raised concerns over privacy loss [in the past]“…
The technologies that “extropia” mentioned(doorbell, phone, camera, mic) has a negligible impact on privacy, as I mentioned earlier. Though I did mis-use the quote – should have read more carefully before posting.
> “Jackboot-wearing officials setting up CCTV cameras in all spaces and demanding we give away all our personal details or else”
Um, I never said that… and I'm sure C.S. Lewis didn't say that in his text either… Been a while since I read the full text. If Lewis did say that, a chapter/page number of where he mentioned it would be fabulous.
> “ressurrect it, recycle it, rebrand it, until gains acceptance”
“convince enough people that the negligble compromise”
Sigh… The same old 'everyone's forgetting privacy, might as well follow suit' message. Like I said several times, such techniques will only work with the uneducated. As long as corporations continue their top-down, faux 'user centric' approach towards ignorant and deceptive 'in on it' individuals, there can be no 'trust' between them and us, no matter how hard they try to “convince” the masses.
No need to put my name in quotes. It is my name.
That Jackboot quote was my parody of your position, which seems to me to be the belief that some minority group is out to force everyone to adopt dehumanizing technologies. It is my belief that 'force' is too strong a word for the subtle way these things I hope for and you fear are being introduced into our lives.
>Sigh… The same old 'everyone's forgetting privacy, might as well follow suit' message. Like I said several times, such techniques will only work with the uneducated. As long as corporations continue their top-down, faux 'user centric' approach towards ignorant and deceptive 'in on it' individuals, there can be no 'trust' between them and us, no matter how hard they try to “convince” the masses.<
Have you ever read Francis Fukuyama's 'Our Posthuman Future: Consequences Of The Biotechnology Revolution?' I am sure his words will strike you as wise indeed:
“We need at all costs to avoid a defeatist attitude with regard to technology that says since we can't do anything to stop or shape developments we don't like, we shouldn't bother trying in the first place”.
If you believe you should take a stand against anything, then you should. I am not necessarily out to change your mind, if only for the simple reason that what you think and what I think will have virtually no baring on how the future turns out. Neither of us are all that influential I am afraid. What I AM trying to get across, is that the factors driving us towards this future are way more subtle and complex than your posts imply.
The faux 'don't bother posting' message aside,
> “factors driving us towards this future are way more subtle and complex”
Convenience, cubic zirconias, fool's gold, candy… What's the difference?
Correct answer is, that there are no major differences (think Pyramid Schemes!). Educated people are simply *not* going to sell their soul for some minuscule 'convenience', despite prayers from the so-called 'optimists'. These days, optimist (or optimistic) seems to have replaced the word 'prayer'…
Vote with your feet, people!