Introduction
Imagine that you've got a hyperthymesia and you can never forget anything in your brain. How could your life be? You may remember everything you experienced. Both achievement and failure. It is right to learn from mistakes, however, it can be too much to keep all bad things in your head. This will be a burden which will become an obstacle to your success.
How could this happen to me?
Sadly, we all are involved.
Try your name on Google search, you may find something you did but forgotten. I got some, including failing an exam in my college. LoL
Why my name is there for years, and no one delete it? Who put it on the net?
Are they responsible for this consequence? Do we have the right to be forgotten?
'Digital memories will only remind us of the failures of our past.'--Viktor Mayer-Schönberger:
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| Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian |
Nine months ago, Mayer-Schönberger, professor of internet governance at the Oxford Internet Institute, said that it is human right to erasure digital footprint and this right is for the freedom to forget the (trouble) past.
What is a digital footprint?
- A digital footprint is the data trail left by the interactions in a digital environment; including the use of TV, mobile phone, the World Wide Web, the internet, databases and other connected devices and sensors. Digital Footprints provide data on what has been performed in the digital environment (e.g. what you clicked on, searched for, Liked, where you went, your location, your IP address, what you said, what was said about you); and the data can be used in behavioral targeting, behavioral economics, personalisation, targeted marketing, digital reputation, social Influence and other social media or social graphing services. In social media, a digital footprint can refer to the size of a person's "online presence" measured by the number of individuals with whom they interact.
(Wikipedia)
Managing Your Digital Footprint
By Robert GraysonLKU~OG4.jpg)
Things to think
We are more and more dependent on digital devices nowadays, which has already brought us many problems including privacy issue and online bullying etc. All of those trouble came out while the rapid development taking place in digital techniques.
These days companies are trying to make full use of our digital footprint to make profit.If you have searched something on shopping pages, you will probably find it stay on your screen when there is an ad and the product is exactly the kind of what you wanted. Do you think our online shopping is still a private thing to do?
Even if you did it alone in your own room, someone will know. It is hard to define this behavior as a private affair or not due to its interaction. But for ourselves, digital footprint recalls our past, and this is absolutely individual's affair which associated to human freedom.
Legalizing
There has always been a lack of legal regulation for new things. Legalizing also takes long time and when finished maybe it could have been out of date already.
And in some technical field, there is deficiency of experts in legalizing apartment.
Is there any advantage?
Everything has two sides. Digital footprint helps investigation of crime.
It can remind you of your history.
The problem is not the technology , it is the way we use it really matters.
About privacy
What digital footprint means to us? It means Obama can know the details in your phone-call with your girlfriend if he want.
*Things happening in China(not very relevant)
Digital footprint also transfer into reality format.
Inter-persons search often takes place in China.
If someone offend 'the public'(often reveals to most of active and aggressive internet users), they got searched in reality by someone using digital techniques. Some people get hurt mentally and even physically by this. It is a terrible trample of people's privacy.
relevant links:
Thank you John~
ReplyDeleteAs we all know, what we have done nowadays can be kept as the digital footprint for a lone time, even longer than our lives. What the new technology brings to us is not only the power and speed, but also some potential danger of safety.
Our digital foot prints can be used in many ways. For us, we treat them as our valuable memories, though we don’t want to recall all of them sometimes, like John. Additionally, there is a study done by some scholars, called Social and Community Intelligence. This project is aimed to ‘use’ our digital foot print. It sounds like a bit creepy. It aims to revealing the individual/group behaviours, social interactions as well as community dynamics by mining the digital traces left by people while interacting with cyber-physical space (Internet and Web application, static infrastructure, mobile devices and wearable sensors). Furthermore, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put the Facebook under fire from privacy safety issue. He believes that the idea of the right to privacy should be changed sooner or later. Nowadays many people argue that the Facebook site is lack of concern for protesting user privacy.
"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," Zuckerberg said. "That social norm is just something that has evolved over time." - Abstract from the website
On the other hand, is that true for what Zuckerberg said? There must be a question mark. A private detective called Steven Rambam said: ‘Privacy Is Dead!’ He did a great presentation on his concept. I have post the link here: http://www.naistv.com/a.steverambam.html
He demonstrates to the audience that there will be only a few steps to mine all the information for a journalist. Although digital footprints can be used the clues of chasing some criminals, how it could threat us as ordinary people?
Moreover, one American FBI Charles Schumer asked Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate reports that applications on the Apple Inc and Google Inc mobile system steal private photos and contacts and post them online without consent. And he tries to ask for protection as legalization. I have post the link below:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/04/us-apple-google-ftc-idUSTRE8230WZ20120304
All in all, we cannot just simply blame to government, the internet provider or the new technology. Because each of has involved in it, rely on it, or even enjoy it. Like Steven Rambam said: you posted them by yourself and ‘you are stealing your own identity!’
Thank u John~~~
ReplyDeleteBefore John's comment of this news, I have totally agreed with the author's position, that the ability to forget our past, is a part of what makes us human, and a way to let us free.
I have started to use social media when I was very young, about 13 or 14 years old I guess. As you know, young people are always want all the "others" know who they are, what they are going to do, so, unfortunately, I have put too much pictures and private information in internet ,which have became a bomb of my life nowadays, I have no idea about why others can search for my stupid pictures and blogs of my 16 years old. When I saw how ugly I was in these kind of pictures, I just want to delete my data in internet but the only thing I can do is to lock some photo albums on my website page. It makes me really like a victim of digital memory.
Like the author argued, because"Our brains reconstruct the past based on our present values.So, when you take the diary you wrote 15 years ago, and you see how your values have changed."This is a concept about "selection", which means we chose what we want to remember, it need a very long time to see what you really want to remember, because you are not really make this kind of "decision", but your brain do that.
"If we want to abstract things we need to forget the details to be able to see the forest and not the trees. If you have digital memories, you can only see the trees."digital memory broke the regular down, and store almost everything in our life's timeline. It causes several problems:
1: How to make the user's data safer and protect user's privacy? If I don't want others see my past, how can we delete our data without any "footprint"in internet? It looks really hard.
2: If digital memory can be changed to forget something, who will make this kind of decision? ourselves or companies? what is the standard to judge something need to be forgot or not?
I think all of these issues need to be considered deeper.
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ReplyDeleteThank you John for such valuable sharing.
ReplyDeleteI just want to expand this topic a little further. I used to work in Advertisting agency and respectively, I must say digital footprint is very important factor for us to consider what kind of consumer target when digital approach is taken into account.
First, we hire the third parties, which are marketing research firms for example AC Nielsen, to investigate how people in different contexts access and use knowledge and information, specifically examining user behaviour in digital environments to develop more appropriate models for enhancing information and digital literacy skills. They employ digital footprint analysis, kind of a qualitative methods and structural equation modelling to understand the behaviour and literacy skills of digital consumers, and investigate outcomes in virtual environments.
Thereby, marketers/adverts planners can utilise this research to understand the complex behaviours associated with information-seeking in a variety of contexts. By analysing behaviours, researchers can adapt knowledge strategies to enable people to access and use information more effectively.
An illustration of this is the Tribe Analysis developed by 360i company.
360i’s Tribe analysis let’s marketers know who’s talking about a particular brand. Going beyond demographic profiling, analyze the consumer’s digital footprint to uncover specific passion points that drive behavior. This unique way of segmenting social audiences has implications for media targeting, as well as content and community strategy.
An issue of this is consumer's privacy are ignored and companies are able to shape/manipulate consumers. Provide them with desired products instead of the products that they really need.
This is quite a debate of marketing business ethics when big enterprise can gain competitive advatanges over small-medium business by investigation consumer's behaviour on the Internet and continue to extend its dominance in the global market.