Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism

Zuboff coins the word “surveillance capitalism” to refer to the growing trend of commerce in which the commodity being bought and sold is consumers’ personal information. The documentary roughly follows the frankly horrifying rise of surveillance capitalism, and how Silicon Valley has seemingly found it more profitable to cater to investors and venture capitalists by creating technology that extracts these massive amounts of what was considered “residual data” to track, predict, and manipulate human behavior by essentially tricking users.

What I found interesting about this is how Zuboff addresses common questions regarding the loss of privacy – for example that big tech companies are simply using the data to improve the user experience, by countering that those companies take far more information than they need so they can sell to advertisers what will most likely emotionally affect you. Many times discussions around this topic tend to avoid or otherwise assume that readers/viewers understand why this mass surveillance is an overt intrusion of privacy. What’s more, Zuboff validates by presenting work from academics, so that the rhetoric of these companies dismissing accusations of privacy infringement as very “tinfoil-hat” is delegitimized. It’s really easy to simply give into apathy and accept that there is no longer a such thing as a personal, private life, but I felt Zuboff makes the case that as a society we ought to be very worried.

Cadwalladr, “I made Steve Bannon’s Psychological Warfare Tool”

Cadwalladr follows the story of Chistopher Wylie, the whistleblower who broke the news on Cambridge Analytica, how far and deep the story of election-meddling goes, and his own role in it. Wylie is portrayed as a kid who really liked tech, was good at it, and came up with the idea of linking personality traits and interests to habits, political views, and even willingness to support new ideas. He didn’t think about the broader consequences of working with people like Steve Bannon, Robert Mercer, and SCL, all of whom had their own agenda they wanted to implement.

What’s wild is that as easy as it is to criticize Wylie for irresponsibly allowing and helping with this massive data collection scheme, none of us five years ago would’ve ever imagined that something like having your one weird aunt take a personality quiz the one time would’ve lead to you and everyone linked to said aunt’s data being compromised as part of a larger scheme to unethically reap data to influence the presidential election of a major world power. If anyone, the people who took advantage of Wylie’s ideas are to blame. Facebook especially knew that something fishy was going on, but they turned the other cheek, knowing that they’d profit off of the ad revenue. This incident was even referenced in Zuboff, and I think it’s important to address the human cost of our (more specifically, companies’ and bad actors’) pursuit for power and wealth.

Questions:

Do you think Wylie is adequately taking responsibility for the harm his actions have caused?

How urgent do you believe the issue of infringement of privacy to be?

Near the end of her documentary, Zuboff points out that there was a time when we lived without all this smart technology, as a means to point out that we do not have to be reliant on these companies. What do you think of this? Can we go back to a time before data became our greatest obsession?

Do you believe the parties involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal were properly punished/held in check? What laws or rulings could be put in place to limit the ability of this sort of scandal to happen again? Do you think it’s even possible to prevent it at this point?

Define briefly “residual data” and its purposes.

-Shoshana Zuboff

This video talks about what is surveillance capitalism, how it engaged in our life and what will be the future of it. Surveillance capitalism is caused by IT companies using user’s data to surveillance people, and people are not aware of it in most circumstances. Those companies gained our data and sell them to third parties, and we have no idea what third parties will do to them. However, the speaker believes that this phenomenon exists because this is something no one has done before, it takes time for the public to wake up and enact related laws to constrain this behavior. Democracy will defeat surveillance capitalism eventually. 

• Carole Cadwalladr 

Cambridge analytical company was a company using Facebook user’s data to interact with the US presidential election and other political movements. They think politics is like fashion. They found connections between people’s personalities and which side they are more willing to vote for. Facebook was aware of this but didn’t actually try to stop this company from what they are doing. People can be controlled in shadow by some organization by analyzing data and permeate into daily digital life.

-Stuart A Thompson and Charlie Warzel

The smartphone on our phone can precisely track our position data. This applies to both normal people and celebrities. By looking into data, we are able to find who is doing something at where easily. Our demographic information can create audience profiles used in targeted advertising. Some companies offer their own ethical guidelines to govern it because of the absence of federal privacy law. “The greatest trick technology companies ever played was persuading society to surveil itself.”

-Drew Harwell 

Some college is using apps to surveillance their student to see if they attend class. They use data to decide what score can a student get. They even use students’ data to see if a student is “normal”. They thought in this way they can know and guide students better. While students were struggling with technical problems. Some students feel that they are adults and should have basic privacy. There are students and parents believe this kind of software is actually very helpful.

-Helen Nissenbaum

Helen mainly told us about some extension her team made in order to cause obfuscation.  “Obfuscation does not work by hiding rather it works by introducing noise.” Tract me not and Adnauseam is an extension that does random searching for users, so companies like Google and Facebook are not able to find users’ tire patterns. Her extensions are banned by google later on because it harmed the third parties: it harmed the income of commercials. 

-Jenny Davis

The author resists students from tracking clearly. University is a place for people to get through from students to adults, it’s for students to learn how to take care of themselves, do decision because they think they should do this from the bottom of their hearts instead of being forced to things. Learn to choose, learn to manage how to enjoy their freedom under restrictions, decide what are the truly important things to do. The surveillance will spread, not only for students but also for faculty and other university-related students.

When people are facing choices instead of force to choose the good/right things, it’s time for their to check their moral standard. If we want to create a society with trust, dignity, care, we have to give people room to train for these noble characters.

Carole Cadwalladr – ’I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’ (Guardian)

Wylie even goes as far as breaking a non-disclosure agreement that outs at risk not only himself, but his boss and affiliates. It brings into question at what point is it necessary to break non-disclosure agreements in order to provide the public with the truth.

This idea of studying personality by quantifying it reaches patterns of likes/dislikes according to profile data is really interesting. I imagine that these results are limited to the selected emotions/response allowed through Facebook. But would the same patterns be visible through different social platforms? Where is the line of Facebook profile data versus all social media profiles? Should it be fair use or censored for public/selected public?

It’s crazy to understand that politics have infiltrated the online public now in order to promote and campaign their representatives. Facebook discreetly sharing profile data goes to show how corrupt the online playing field has gotten. Manipulating, and setting up propaganda according to different communities has always been in history, but this is taking it a step further. How far is too far (in the sense that we as a public loose our freedom of thought)?

Stuart A Thompson and Charlie Warzel – One Nation, Tracked (NY Times)

Phones in a way have become the new census. Except instead of the information being disclosed to the actual participants, the data is collected secretly. Instead of it belonging to a federal / government department, it is held by big corporations that hold severe consequences for their workers if they were to ever reveal information. For me, it questions the legitimacy of a federal government. It also questions the morality of these people behind the data, what are their intentions? And why are they hiding the data in the first place?

Not only do they have information of our location, they have information of our voices and facial recognition. It reminds me of Amazon’s ties with facial recognition data that Jeff Bezos attempted to hand over to ICE in order to collect undocumented customers. By doing so, profile data is being stored and handed off to federal operations that oppress, segregate, and harm lives in America.

More info here: https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/amazon-role-immigration-crackdown-190716194004183.html

Drew Harwell – Colleges are turning phones into surveillance machines (Washington Post)

When I read this I immediately thought about two apps. One of them was Kahoot. The other was an app that my friend had mentioned to me a couple semesters ago. The app they had mentioned would track your location and make sure you were in the campus during your classes. It would total points to your profile depending on how long you were in the lectures, labs, studios, etc. Kahoot also monitors the students but through anonymous data collection that they are aware of when they participate.

This article brings the topic of micromanaging into phone surveillance. I think it’s interesting that the students backlash on this because of their discomfort. They feel that it’s not only an invasion of privacy, but it sets them up to conform to being systematically surveyed. Especially if this tactic is implemented into education and academia, it become a grave and permanent mindset for upcoming generations.

Jenny Davis – A clear case for resisting student tracking (Cyborgology)

“One social consequence of SpotterEDU and similar tracking applications is that these technologies normalize surveillance and degrade autonomy. This is especially troublesome among a population of emerging adults”

I definitely agreed with this. By micromanaging students specifically, it also normalizing intensive surveillance. In addition to this, I don’t think it’s necessary. As a student, it devalues the trust, independence, and personal motivation for education and replaces it with fear of consequences/punishments. It underestimates the potential of a singular person and encourages the idea that we need someone to look after us in order to be successful. By collecting all this data, it steers towards shaping a collective persona rather than unique independent individuals.

Helen Nissenbaum – Mapping Interventions – Digital Democracies Conference (talk, 30m)

Obfuscation: “the production, inclusion, addition or communication of misleading, ambiguous, or false data in an effort to evade, distract, or confuse data gatherers or diminish the reliability (and value) of data aggregations.”

Example of manipulation of plane location through paper shreds that confused the radar frequencies during battle. Compared to spiders that make web based spiders to confuse other prey from eating their food. I’m curious about how the need to confuse and manipulate environments for the sake of private safety relates to modern day censorship of data collections.

Banning, appealing and applying legislation to prevent private data collection. Investigations reveal advertising networks play a part that continue to aid large corporations (Google).

“Information services and platforms need machine-readable humans in order efficiently to exploit out most human endeavors (sharing, learning, searching, socializing, communicating).”

Battle of morality. Who’s right is it to own information? How much of an invasion of privacy is it? And does profiling manifest efficient control.

Shoshana Zuboff – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (video documentary, 50m)

Talks about how the biggest companies use our data that they collect. Questions how we can gain our control of our data back. Surveillance capitalism. The idea that humans are commercialized and their data is used as monetary profit among big companies.

Data not only informs the collectors of the users history, but their predictable future. With the data exchanged/sold between big businesses (Google), they can easily create algorithms that predict what the users will likely do in the future. It can inquire future geographic locations or purchases. Through this, companies can adjust their marketing and even take action within media propaganda to lure their customers.

It’s difficult to come up with a reasonable solution for the daily consumer. Since phones and technology have become to prominent and necessary, it is difficult to boycott these platforms for the sake of web privacy. While I may risk my information online if I carry my phone around, I may risk my life if I were to come to a dangerous real life situation without a phone that I could use to navigate to safety. Despite even deleting and monitoring the information my apps take from my internet profiles, there is also the constant data collection of the audio and facial recognition from the phone itself.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Shoshana Zuboff
The only security I was cautious or aware of was the camera on my mac, but there are so many other ways for my data to be collected than I have realized. For example, our navigation and search engines on google allows them to know where we are 24/7, and FB knows our hobbies/preferences because they retrieve a lot of information from the digital traces we leave behind. I know many times the things I search up on google pop up on my fb/youtube ads, because my phone is constantly collecting data about me and sharing that data with numerous other third parties. What was frightening to learn from this video is how we are paying with our privacy. For example, Nest Thermostat collects users data and sends that data to other numerous third parties and not taking any responsibility for what they do with it. Those who choose not to allow Nest to collect their data in a way, hold the functionality of the device hostage to their agreeing of the privacy contract. In a way it shows how much power these corporations have and how much customers are willing to agree to these privacy terms to be able to use their products. It is true, we are paying with our privacy…

If using our data helps the products we use to be more efficient or the websites we use to cater more to our interests, is it worth giving up our privacy?

Mapping Interventions Helen Nissenbaum
One thing I found very interesting is the online software AdNauseam which helps block Ads by automating ad clicks on behalf of the user. There is an option that allows users to see all the ads that would appear on your screen into an “Advault” which will give you a sense of how the industry sees you and how your profile is seen on the internet. However after running for over a year, AdNauseam was banned by google on the chrome store, which is very interesting to see how google felt threatened by their extension by saying that their “extension’s functionality that blocks malware to be a distinct purpose from the function which hides and clicks ads.” I have an extension called AdBlocker and many times websites make me disable the function in order to continue using the website, I wonder why these sorts of ad blockers are such a threat…

Do you agree with some people that you have to trade off privacy for security?

’I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’ Carole Cadwalladr’s
Right off the bat, below my screen a popup appeared that said “Your Privacy. We use cookies to improve your experience on our site and to show you personalized advertising.” Which then only gives us an option to agree for the cookies to be used. It crazy to read how someone as young as Wylie was about to control and influence so many people by harvesting the FB profiles of millions of people in the US and use their private and personal information to create psychological and political profiles. It then targets them with political ads designed to work on their particular psychological makeup. I wonder how much of my data influences the type of political media that is shown to me. Perhaps my race, gender, pages I like, design a personalized political agenda for me.

How will FB data collecting be different as the younger generation are turning to other outlets rather than FB?

One Nation, Tracked Stuart A Thompson and Charlie Warzel
I love how the website started off with a visual tool for the reader to get a very clear understanding of the great power of our cell phones have in tracking our privacy. It’s crazy how much data is being collecting and how much of our privacy is exposed by just allowing an app to know our location. I can’t believe it’s perfectly legal to collect and sell our information like this (if they do it in a legal manner)… There’s no federal law that limits human tracking (unless it’s for hostile purposes). Although these dots on the map don’t show personal information, it is easy to connect the dots and see someone’s personal life. It can trace things such as your commute from home to work that can easily be identifiable after some research. This reminds me that I actually have a tracking app that my mom makes me use which marks down my every location and things such as where I was 30 mins ago, if I am in a car or not, and even my battery percentage. This app is collecting my data 24/7 without me even noticing.

How can this sort of data tracing be helpful in criminal cases, or should investigations be even allowed to access this data?

Colleges are turning phones into surveillance machines Drew Harwell
I think it’s an interesting system that some colleges are using apps and campus networks to track their students for attendance. I do agree in some ways it’s a great way for students to come to class so they aren’t marked down in their grades, but in a way it’s training students to believe that surveillance is a normal part of life. If we start to normalize surveillance and accept it to be a part of life, our actions and lifestyles will start to change. Even though some universities believe that this will boost student success, they can calculate student’s personalized risk scores by the amount of times they go to the library etc… It’s starts to become a dystopian society where we are all controlled by technology and our power to make our own decisions whether someone is watching or not diminishes. I found this very interesting and agree to this: “It embodies a very cynical view of education — that it’s something we need to enforce on students, almost against their will, We’re reinforcing this sense of powerlessness … when we could be asking harder questions, like: Why are we creating institutions where students don’t want to show up?” This brings up a good point about education… Why are we creating this view where institutions have to enforce students, assuming that they don’t want to show up to class?

Do you think instituting this tracking system will be beneficial in the workplace?

A clear case for resisting student tracking Jenny Davis
I really agree with Drew Harwell when he said “these technologies normalize surveillance and degrade autonomy…There is a fine line between mechanisms of support and mechanisms of control. These tracking technologies veer towards the latter, portending a very near future in which extrinsic accountability displaces intrinsic motivation and data extraction looms inevitable.” Especially as college students, this is a very important stage in our lives where we are growing, learning, and transitioning. If we are developing with mechanisms of control, we aren’t developing out of our own will but accustoming ourselves in fear of surveillance and punishment. We should be allowed to make our own decisions without knowing we are being watched.

If we live in a surveillance world, is our accountability and actions controlled by the hands of a system?

One Nation Tracked:

What do you all propose we should do to bring attention to this privacy crisis as artists and specifically digital artists? How should we move throughout our lives knowing this information is out there and has the high possibility to be abused?

How would you define the term personal data? What type of data is impersonal? Does this mean it should be a-okay to track such data?

What are some of the ways that this article states our data can be used against us? What are some example of how our data isn’t secure even in private servers?

The first thing this really makes me think of is snapchat maps. When that feature came out it was an automatic thing, that I personally turned off, I saw no reason why my friends should know my every move. And to this day people still ask me why I did so, why they cant see me on it. When I have watched them spy on others on multiple occasions. Thinking about that type of thing on such a grand scale, and knowing we have no laws or practices in place to stop it is terrifying, it makes me wonder what we can even do about it besides going back to being a non technological society which obviously isn’t feasible. But regardless having this data, it makes things like protests even scarier than they might already be. Things like civil unrest can easily become trackable and punishable. Given the state of our government it makes so many things possible that we might’ve thought were only in the history books. It makes me wonder when advertising and money became more important than privacy, and personhood in a way.

But most of all, and probably the sad part, none of this is surprising to me. In fact it doesn’t make me more afraid than I was before. Because some part of me already knew this was happening. From having to remove apple’s storage of my locations to the apps I use every day, I already knew privacy didn’t exist. Its so strange to me how this has become common place and at least for me, I don’t even bat an eye or think about how to change my personal behavior to protect myself.

Colleges are Turning….:

Listen I get that attendance is important. But the way to do it is not to be incredibly intrusive to a students personal privacy. I feel like some of these technologies force students to give more information to their professors than they might want. For instance the professor always checking in on his students and asking where they were when they miss. In theory this is fine, but in practice, a student shouldn’t have to tell their professor why they miss (unless maybe its consistent or it’s been a while? obviously there are grey areas) I think there has to be a middle zone for this, professors care about their students and I think checking in on students can be really helpful and important, but I also think constantly tracking a student for attendance sake is strange and terrifying. Especially at the college level there is some expectation of adulthood, unlike in high school and below where the day is micromanaged for us.

Not to mention when that tracking leaves the classroom. A school (and all the other companies in the country, see previous reading response…) shouldn’t have that much control over a students life, not only because independence is important and the school isn’t our parents, but also because its crossing so many boundaries of what a school is responsible for. And things like risk scores are just asking for dangerous amounts of bias. I really liked the question one student asked. Why are we creating institutions that make students not want to show up? I think that is a bigger issue than can be solved by ripping away privacy and once again personhood. Unlike with general tracking, this enables schools to have a direct intervention for students which I feel is an even worse breach on top of the already monumentous overstepping of boundaries.

The fact that there are suggestions of segregating populations to “watch” them is shameful in all honesty. It doesn’t surprise me that the system is also having issues that actually harms the students learning more than before. I think this system can only lead to more abuse of power and it’s frankly disgusting to me that it’s happening at all.

So, how are we creating institutions that make people not want to show up? How do we fix that? What level of surveillance is a good amount of surveillance on a large scale?

I made Steve Bannons…:

I don’t know how I have never heard of this guy before, I think Im not looking in the right places. It baffles me that I can know our elections are likely not fair, and not understand any reason why. I want to know how it’s possible that something on such a large scale that could’ve effect national security of sorts isn’t common knowledge.

It seems that in an age of large scale surveillance nothing is really safe from its hold. Before it might have been human bias and other types of practices that stopped fair voting, now is it both that and blatant illegal activity. (Maybe it always was this way Im not entirely sure.) It makes me wonder when these kinds of operations started and why. Were they all always for causes like this, or were some started with humble beginnings that ended up going sour?

What really draws my attention is the example of the ads they showed. Because to me, that ad proves why that message of the second amendment shouldn’t be so important to american’s but rather gun safety should, the message reads to me like sarcasm despite the GOP label at the bottom. But I wonder what it looks like to others. Is it a plan to make it fall onto either side easily or meant to skew the results and I am simply not the target demographic?

A clear case for….:

Just like the other school based app article, 1) college students are adults and don’t need the hand holding, I know that retail jobs are just about as bad about workers = adult autonomous humans but that doesn’t mean everyone needs to adopt that behavior and 2) its so creepy and breaks so many boundaries its not even funny. This article only reinforced my distaste for these apps by proving those two points and this new wave of surveillance because everything needs to be worthy of the money an entity is spending on it.

Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: Apparently she’s the Karl Marx of our time… Has she written a manifesto? Tech companies use rhetoric that misleads us. Liking targeted ads, personalization, or saying, “I have nothing to hide,” comes from a place of ignorance. Information is being gathered whether or not you disclose it from residual data. Google knows where you are at all times or how fast you type/drive. Collecting data can improve service, but it also studies patterns of human behavior. This is when auctioning your interests to companies behind your back comes into play. Restaurants can be recommended based on your zipcode. Tech can tell if you’re pregnant before you even know it based on your online purchasing. Muscles in your face can be analyzed in a Facebook photo to read your emotion. Facebook can even manipulate how you feel without you knowing it. There’s a connection between Google Earth and Pokemon Go. The ‘click through’ method gets replaced with ‘foot fall’. Businesses profited from Pokemon Go too and nobody noticed/questioned it because they were having fun. Hidden microphones also collect data. The point is that no company is taking responsibility for selling your data. You are held hostage to privacy contracts -if you don’t agree with the contract you don’t get to use the service. A future where cars are free if you pay with your privacy? Creepy! Christopher Wylie exposes Cambridge Analytica which then sparks a California lawsuit against Facebook? Freaky! Good on India for not taking the free smart phone bait. Also, the Amish not letting technology control them is kind of incredible. Using VPNs can subvert Google, but it doesn’t fix the problem.

Hellen Nissenbaum’s Mapping Interventions: TrackMeNot is a privacy project which sends fake queries to the Department Of Justice. Cryptagram encrypts images to prevent facial recognition which doesn’t necessarily hide the person, just creates noise. So, hiding in plain site? Obfuscation interferes with reading people as if they’re machines. More examples of obfuscation include Heather Dewey-Hagborg’s DNA spray, Grosser’s Go Rando, and Nissenbaum’s ADNASEUM which makes it look as though you like all the ads targeting you. ADNASEUM got banned from the chrome store for ‘harming’ the advertisement networks? Because they challenged Google’s interests (a.k.a. ad revenue)? Once again, people trading privacy for a false sense of security gets mentioned. Hopefully I will get to know more about Gary Marx come discussion time.

Carole Cadwalladr’s ’I made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: I couldn’t imagine having Steve Bannon as my boss… Does Christopher Wylie feel extremely guilty for his role regarding SCL/Cambridge Analytica? I guess so if he’s considered a whistler blower. Then again, maybe he’s just saving face? I wonder if I’m one of the 230 million Americans who were psychologically profiled via Facebook… I always thought those quizes/games were sketchy. It’s scarier to think that just one Facebook friend falling for this myPersonality quiz is enough to have your information gathered as well. Apparently it doesn’t matter to Facebook if it’s for ‘research’. Of course tech and the military go hand-in-hand. Though it is interesting how they’re making a connection between fashion trends and politics… So Cambridge Analytica didn’t do work for Lukoil (a Russian company); however, they briefed them on Facebook, data, micro-targeting, and election disruption? I can’t facepalm any harder. I think describing Wylie as Machiavellian isn’t a stretch. The Lib Dems might have said no to him, but he just stumbled upon Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer who would say yes to him.

Stuart A Thompson and Charlie Warzel’s One Nation, Tracked: This website is gorgeous! Of course it’s made by The New York Times… Once again, it’s legal in the U.S. to collect and sell your data. Companies that collect your data justify this act with three claims: 1) People consent to be tracked, 2) the data is anonymous and 3) the data is secure. The reality is that these claims don’t hold up, they’re from a place of ignorance. I like how they are actually showing their collected data as dots on a map (and later paths). clearly they’ve decided to not show the names of people for the sake of this op-ed, but the reality is that names are not all that anonymous when you know where they work and live. The simple fact that they were able to acquire this data and turn it into news questions how secure it really is. I think it’s especially scary how easy it is to track down protesters, it makes running an authoritarian regime much simpler. Ah yes, the privacy policies filled to the brim with legal jargon that a layman could never really understand… I’ve never heard of S.D.K.s (which transmit location data)? Of course Facebook, Google, and Amazon have them.

Memorable quotes: 1) “The seduction of these consumer products is so powerful that it blinds us to the possibility that there is another way to get the benefits of the technology without the invasion of privacy.” 2) “D.N.A. is probably the only thing that’s harder to anonymize than precise geolocation information.”

Jenny Davis’ A clear case for resisting student tracking and Drew Harwell’s Colleges are turning phones into surveillance machines: An app called SpotterEDU is advertised as helpful for tracking student attendance (Does it make sure athletes stay eligible to play or does it notice warning signs for mental health? Probably neither?); however, this kind of tracking has the potential to negatively effect disadvantaged students. For example, students who receive financial aid and are a full-time worker may have their funding cut based on behavioral metrics (a.k.a. class attendance being lower than average). When attendance averages are determined by/reflect the demographic majority (e.g., white, upper-middle class), demographic minorities may suffer from even more unnecessary monitoring. In fact, students have already been tracked separately based on race and residency by colleges. Jenny Davis proposes that this system may expand to effect faculty too, by monitoring how long their classes are or how much time they spend in their office. I wonder if it’s truly worth having packed classes because students fear a tracking device linked to their phones?

Memorable quotes: 1) “There is a fine line between mechanisms of support and mechanisms of control.” 2) “The point is that data systems come from society and society is unequal.” 3) “Building technology was a lot more fun before it went all 1984.” 4) “We’re reinforcing this sense of powerlessness… when we could be asking harder questions, like: Why are we creating institutions where students don’t want to show up?”

Digital Democracies Conference:

Hellen Nissenbaum covers a wide range of topics concerning web browsers and search engines. She focuses in on the idea of Obfuscation, which she explains takes the approach of obscuring your info by introducing noise instead of trying to hide it. She discusses two of her own projects during the talk: TrackMeNot and AdNauseum. TrackMeNot was made as a response to finding out that search engines save our search queries. TrackMeNot is a browser add on that sends fake queries to the search engines (by using Obfuscation!). AdNauseum is another add on that virtually clicks on and likes all of the adds that a user encounters. The program stores all of the ads clicked on in an “AdVault” which can be accessed to show what ads the industry has been sending you and, in turn, how the industry views you. It gives us some intelligence of how our individual profiles are being viewed.

Nissenbaum argues that she believes the future is private – as do many of the other authors/speakers present in this week’s readings/videos. How do you feel about this statement? Do you believe the future is private?

Cyborgology:

Jenny Davis uses her article to talk about an app called SpotterEDU. SpotterEDU advertises itself as a “automated attendance monitoring and early alerting platform”. The idea is that students download the app and then universities can keep track of who’s coming to class. While it sounds useful and interesting, it’s not worth the social cost; students would now experience full, unhidden surveillance and may be judged based on how they spend their time. One of the most effective examples is when Davis brings up the idea of financial aid under this system: “Students on financial aid may have their funding predicate on behavioral metrics such as class attendance or library time.” She furthers this point by saying, “Students who work full time may be penalized for attending class less regularly or studying from remote locations.” This system would also collect data and form an average that reflects that demographic majority – which she points out is white, upper-middle class. Which means that many demographic minorities would be flagged as abnormal and in need of more surveillance and intervention. The system may look good at a glance, but this would result in too much surveillance and the data could be exploited – because data is a valuable source.

Can you think of any experiences you’ve had that feel similar to or align with the idea of this app? For example, has there been an app that has worried you? Or does your phone’s camera scare you? Etc.

FYI ….. I saw this was going on and asked Julie for more info. Looks like a good opportunity! Transport is free (though you have pay $20 to reserve your seat — refunded when you board the bus).

Hi Ben—

Thanks for sharing this with your students.  The Arts + Culture Career Fair is on the UIC campus and is open to students at all 3 U of I campuses.  UIUC students can learn more about the event and register for it here.  You are not going to be able to see any information if you follow the link, because it is on Handshake@Illinois, the campus-wide career services platform and while all students automatically have accounts, faculty do not.  But here is the information posted there:

Friday, February 21st 2020

12:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Illinois Room at Student Center East, University of Illinois at Chicago, 750 S. Halsted St., Chicago 

Come to Chicago to get connected with the non-profits who are hiring. Meet with employers seeking majors related to performing arts, creative arts, liberal arts & humanities, visual design, museums and libraries.  This is an excellent opportunity to learn about potential internships, summer work, and full-time job opportunities in the arts. Bring your resumes and dress professionally! Transportation is provided and seats are limited.  To reserve your seat, email jrundell@illinois.edu This event is in collaboration with University of Illinois Chicago. Information about employers will be posted here as it is available. If you want to participate as an employer, please contact Julie Rundell at jrundell@illinois.edu

We are renting a bus to go to Chicago and it is free for students.  When they sign up for transportation, there is a $20 deposit, which is refunded when they board the bus.  The bus leaves at 9am sharp and will return around 6pm.

Here is a list of the employers that are registered at this point, with the ones most appealing to A+D students highlighted:

• The Art Institute of Chicago: Summer Internships for Art and Art History majors
• Chicago Zoological Society / Brookfield Zoo: Full-time and part-time jobs
• Fox 32 Chicago: TV, Film, & Journalism
• Fred Astaire Dance Studios: Part and Full-Time Professional Ballroom Dancing jobs for Dance, Theatre, and Music majors
• The Goodman Theatre: Internships for Theatre, Drama, Publicity, Marketing, Arts and Non-Profit Administration, and Management
• Live Nation Entertainment: Production Runner, Production Assistant, Catering Runner, and Catering for all majors
• Merit School of Music: All majors
• Museum of Contemporary Art: Internships and Possible Part-Time Positions for all majors
• North Star Camp: Photographer, Videographer, Arts Instructors, Camp Counselor for Media, Radio/TV/Film, Fine Arts, and Education majors
• Ravinia Festival: Production Assistant (Full-Time/Temporary, internship credit available); Classical Coordinator for all majors
• Ravinia’s Stearns Music Institute: Production Assistant Internship (Full-Time seasonal) for any major, may appeal particularly to Music and Music Business, Music Education and Arts majors
• Read/Write Library: Internships for all majors
• Shedd Aquarium: Part-time Internships, and Volunteer Opportunities for all majors
• Victory Gardens Theater: Unpaid Internships in Marketing, Education, Casting & Producing, Fundraising & Events, and Literary departments for Theatre, Arts Management, Music, and Marketing majors

Thank you for helping spread the word about this Career Fair.  It is a great opportunity for FAA students.

Best,

-j

Julie Rundell

Calming Surveillant Anxiety
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Crawford asks at the end of her article “how might we find a radical potential in the surveillant anxieities of the big data era?” In this spirit, what might such a radical artistic response be? If surveillant anxiety is a fear that our data may reveal too much and/or also misrepresent us, what are some strategies to disable and/or disarm our personal big data profiles?

Challenging the Big Data Fallacy
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A prevailing problem with big data is that some presume that having enough data is the same as having meaning from the data. Yet data must be interepreted to produce meaning. Imagine any kind of artistic object (game, installation, browser extension, performance, etc) that demonstrates the fallacy that more data necessarily equals more meaning.
What Should Be Forgotten?
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A salient feature of big data is that it remembers everything. Going from the premise that some things are better forgotten, devise a performance/video/story/interaction that addresses this quesiton of forgetting. What is important to forget? What problems occur when that type of control is lost over oneself? Black Mirror looked at how it affects interpersonal relationships and citizen-government surveillance relationships…what are some other aspects of life that would/could be negatively impacted by a loss of forgetting.

1: AGENCY

Computer systems can have some degree of agency. Simply making a thing with intention and unleashing it on the world means it maintains some of that intention without its creator. That agency can act on others, other systems, other humans. (examples from SM)

Given this conception of agency, imagine a simple machine/device/interface you could conceivably build using existing tools/tech that communicates a sense of agency to a viewer/user. Try to keep your idea as simple as possible (e.g. a stuffed animal that gets scared at loud noise rather than a complex robotic system that can swordfight with humans).

2: GENDER/LABOR/PERSONAS/IDEOLOGIES

Software engineering is a field that has become male dominated. This lack of diversity combines with the ideologies of the relatively homogenous group of people that write software and “leaks out” into what they make. In other words, if men who write software imagine women in a specific kind of way (idealized, not one of “us”, etc) it can lead them to recreate that way of thinking in the software they write.

Given the above, try one or more of the following:

– Imagine an intervention/exercise/game/etc that would communicate the importance of diversity to programmers who haven’t thought about it. Try to keep the idea as simple as possible.

– How might we conceive of a concious AI that isn’t subject to stereotypical gender norms? Imagine what it might look like or sound like? How would human interaction benefit (or not) from this different conception of a constructed self? How might the AI see us differently than we see ourselves?