Studies and observations

Notes on the social and ethical implications of ubicomp

Adam Greenfield

• Adam Greenfield's book: EveryWare
  • "groundbreaking" "elegant" "soulful" (Bruce Sterling)
  • First ubicomp work suitable for general audience
• Who is he?
  • User-experience background
  • Razorfish in tokyo - lead architect for web design
  • built a lot of websites
  • Instructor at NYU ITP of user-experience
  • Author of "Everyware"
• Everyware is about Ubicomp, Percom, Tangible Media,
• Everyware - an emergent, post-PC paradigm for computation to be found anywhere distributed networking and info processing resources are found
• information processing integrated into the objects and surfaces of everyday life

Everyware example

• Japanese octopus system: an RFID card for subway access that one is supposed to take out and tap again a reader.
• Japanese women leave it in handbag, swing handbag at subway turnstile
  • "digital transaction choreography" single-gesture
  • functional efficiency
    • but a risk because we forget that this info collection thing is there

A curious inversion in which the visible becomes invisible

and the latent is brought to light

Fine. Where do we stand with this?

• prototypes last year are commercial products this year
• adoption is unproblematic in real world
• RFID-based octopus in hongkong 95% of 16-65 population used system
• Everyware can be engaged even in the absence of active, conscious decision (as opposed to PC, cellphone, etc)
  • We are being monitored, studied, collected!
• Everyware encourages the belief that meaningful knowledge of the world can be derived from machine inference (Realty Mining)
  • Adam Greenfield says: these are not reasonable/meaningful data collections, often completely false

Problem:

• Differential permissioning without effective recourse.
  • i.e... who do you turn to if the door doesn't open, but it should
  • what if I 'need a credit card to participate' but I don't want one?
• Presence of one technology may trigger functionality in another... or unpredicatable/undesired emergent behaviors
• Everyware obscures the locus of control.
  • (if I lose connection to the internet, where is the problem?)
• principle 1: default to harmlessness
  • everyware presents itself as neutral and universal
  • risk and safety are construed differently from one culture to another
  • Korea (free kids) .. Germany .. US .. Japan (restricted kids)
• principle 2: be self-disclosing
  • provisions for immediate querying of ownership, use, caps
  • proposed icons to alert users to Everyware
  • "black box" warning
  • gesture available
  • self-describing space
  • self-describing obj
  • info being gathered
• principle 3: be conservative of face
  • don't unnecessarily embarasses, humiliate, or shame users
  • nothing is universal (cultural differences)
• principle 4: be conservative of time
  • don't add undue complications in ordinary ops
  • i.e., kettle on stove... don't ask if I need help boiling water
• principle 5: be deniable
  • always be able opt out at anypoint with no penalty (other than loss of functionality rendered by ubisystem)

audience questions/comments

• eventually opting out is not really an option (cars, cell phones for teens)
• Is it really good to take away awesome functionality because of privacy?
  • hope for open-ended paternalism