It's My Privacy (1)

Every time I come to write something about privacy on the web, another social platform changes its private policies accompanied by widespread outrage in the social web demos, another app is exposed for its leaking - or selling - personal data to marketers or the authorities or governments in Canada and the U.S.  introduce controversial legislation (Bill C-30 and SOPA respectively) that threatens our ability to control the uses of personal information, gives expands the concept of lawful access to give authority to police forces to probe this information, or sidesteps concepts like meaningful consent.

Which made me somewhat apprehensive about taking on writing a chapter for a university textbook called Communication in Question, Second Edition which wil be released in 2013 and is ably edited by Josh Greenberg, associate professor, School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. The chapter is called "Social Networks and Privacy: Should Government Be More Interventionist in Protecting Personal Privacy?"

The publisher, Nelson Education Ltd., and the editor have given me permission to post the as yet unedited chapter here at The Intangibles. I will serialise it over the next few weeks since it is a bit long for a single post and promise to publish a section each Thursday until done. Any comments here about my opinions could conceivably become part of an edited version . . . so let's have at it!

Part One (A short introduction and simple answer)

The question ‘should government be more interventionist in protecting personal privacy?’ on social networks contains two entirely different questions:

1. Should personal privacy be protected on social networks?
2. Should the government be more interventionist to assist in this?

The answer to the first is yes: to the second no.

A Word or Two

Out of the sheer love of language, I've started an additional Tumblr blog called 'A Word or Two', a take off on the title of a book by Jacques Barzun, a French/American academic who writes on language and culture, called A Word or Two Before You Go.

I've also read his books The House of Intellect and The Culture We Deserve: A Critique of Disenlightenment, but neither lend themselves as well to a cool blog title.

Take a look. You can make comments there by clicking on any post and using the Disqus comment platform.

SXSW PanelPicker - Pick Me

I hope you will vote here to support a reprise of my NXNE presentation on slacktivism at next year's SXSW in Austin, Texas.

I posted the NXNE deck on Slideshare in three parts here, here and here. Although my idea for SXSW has the same theme, I promise the presentation will be completed updated.

Damn - I May Have Got it Wrong

After about 30 years in corporate and issue communications consulting, I've just learned that I may have gone into the wrong business. A couple of weeks ago, the firm I work for held a strategic planning session in which the very able facilitator asked us to describe what we were deeply passionate about in a professional sense.

Here's what I wrote down:

I am deeply passionate about the creation - or revelation - of transformational ideas.

By and large my colleagues expressed their passion in terms like 'making a meaningful difference',' being part of an effective team', 'working to solve client challenges' . . . all important even noble aspirations and particularly suited to the role of consultant.

My one-liner speaks of a different prime mover. Not that I don't get satisfaction from any of the things which motivate my colleagues. But we were asked about "passion" and it is the sweep of ideas that make an appreciable change in principles, that re-shape the way we see the world, that turns my crank.

It sounds embarrassingly elitist to say so I know, but I was probably meant to be an academic, not a pedant or dreary don I would hope, but someone who spends his days talking about, evaluating and debating ideas. Historian Tony Judt in The Memory Chalet, his last book before succumbing to ALS, thinks of it as the "seductive appeal of French intellectuality."

I love Paris: Can I have a do-over?

Info-Images + One Cartoon 2010

The images and infographics below struck a cord with me for a variety of reasons throughout the year. And be patient with the scrolling. There are six images in all . .  . and the best one is the last.

Where dweeb, nerd and geek meet. (I sure hope I fit the geek category and not the others.)

The death this year (one hopes) of the self-described social media guru. (And not a moment too soon.)

Facebook rules

Paul Butler, an engineering intern at Facebook, made this image from a sample of 10 million Facebook friendship pairs. The map was created organically from the pairs, and the lines represent human relationships.

Okay, maybe mobile browsers rule (Although personally I find my mobile brower frustrating to use, slow and with insufficient screen clarity. But I guess that's just me.)

Facebook Places versus Foursquare (Some research on what people think about whether Facebook Places will overtake Foursquare, and some who don't care. And apologies to the creator of this graph and academics who have to identify sources in their papers -- I can't find the source for this anymore. If someone would like to point me to the owner, I would be more than happy to give approprate attribution.)

The social demographics of Facebook and Twitter. (Too bad the creators couldn't measure login by the hour: I wonder what the stats would look like then.)