There are a few things I hold sacred…
• honesty
• convenience
• privacy
• chocolate (but that’s not really relevant here)
• and the right to experiential discovery
What happens when technology pits these sacred things against one another? How can we have more control over what we’re exposed to or how we’re exposed?
EXAMPLE 1: Take Google Maps Street View.
GMSV is an invaluable tool for things like checking out the neighborhood where I might consider buying a home (honesty, check!), or making sure I know what my mother means when she tells me to “turn left at the house with the green shutters” (convenience, check!). But, it absolutely gives me the heebeegeebees when I think of anyone that might be street-viewing my house – the most sacred of all sacred places.
The mere thought of that random satellite pic being taken at the exact moment I might be freeing a wedgie or on the very day I couldn’t stop my husband from taking out the trash in his underwear, more than merely sends shivers up my spine – it actually angers me. My wedgies and my husband’s underwear are my business.
The two-against-one fight – honesty and convenience vs. privacy – seems unfairly stacked. Should I be able to turn off GMSV for my own address? Or even further, should basic Google Maps have privacy settings?
EXAMPLE 2: Using the Internet in planning a vacation.
I can compare hotels to find one that’s not next to a prison, but close enough to interesting sights to keep my mind intrigued and yummy restaurants to keep my belly full (honesty, convenience, check and check!). But, lately, I find myself struggling to avoid over-exposure to my destination when planning my vacations. I want to know some, but I don’t want to know too much. I live for that first step into an unfamiliar city, when everything is new, a discovery, a first encounter. I relish the mystery of it all.
Sure, no one’s forcing me to use the Internet to research the living daylights out of my vacation destinations, but that’s hardly my point. How can I control the amount of information I see inadvertently?
EXAMPLE 3:We’ve all Googled ourselves, right? You haven’t? Go ahead – take a minute. I’ll wait…
…what did you find? If you’re lucky enough to have a really unusual name, you probably feel OK right now. But, if your name happens to be a little more common, say like, um, I dunno, Sandy Marsh, you might have found some social networking links, my Google profile and some bits and pieces about me at Organic (honesty, yup; privacy, maybe). But, you might also have found an actress from the Patrick Swayze hit “Roadhouse”, someone in Florida selling a condo, and a 57-year-old former police officer in the middle of a harassment suit (honesty? not so much.)
Shouldn’t I be able to tag content in the digital ether as belonging to me? And shouldn’t Google be smart enough to know when I’m searching for a person’s name to give me a list of possible matches before anyone assumes I’m a cop from Florida who moonlighted as a strip-joint bartender in a cheesy 80s movie?
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As an Experience Architect, I’m making it my professional mission to do my small part to resolve the battles between these sacred things. Find a way for honesty, convenience, privacy and discovery to coexist – to be handy for those who want them and controllable for those who don’t. To keep sacred things sacred.
And, if I should fail, I can always take solace in the fact that all the technological advances in the world won’t create digital experiences that taste as good as chocolate.
At least, not yet.
What do you think? Have you heard of any advancements in the works that solve for these dilemmas? Have you come across any digital experiences that strike a fine balance between honesty, convenience, privacy and discovery? If so, please do share.
Sandy Marsh
Comments
Connections
If you comment on enough blogs using your name it helps
but sites like this (123people.co.uk)(purposely not linking) annoy me – theres loads of them to. I suppose as law catch’s up there might be some developments further and above data protection act’s.
Oh yeah, these sites doesn’t make me feel any better. Not only do they show me MORE people with my name to make me feel insignificant
– but it doesn’t connect any of the the information. So, it’s just a bigger list of links that don’t apply to me. Thankfully, I don’t see my address listed or I might just get all riled up again. I do like how it shows all of the matching Facebook profile pics (if one chooses to make their profile public). I wish I could click on my face and aggregate all of the appropriate data below.
It occurs to me now, that Facebook is just as likely a candidate as Google for a tool to organize this type of info.
Thanks for sharing.
Loved this — perfectly captures my constant grappling with this dilemna. Thanks!
Recently I heard about a case from Japan regarding the access of information and protection of privacy. Apparently, feudal Japanese society was stratified, with butchers, leatherworkers, undertakers, and other professions traditionally dealing with death called burakumin quardoned off in ghettos in a sort of “untouchable zone”. While several hundred years have passed since then, some of the stigma from this time still remains attached to their descendants, and if it was discovered that your family had lived in one of these zones there is potential for discrimination. As it turns out, large numbers of old documents and maps had recently been digitized by Google showing these burakumin areas, and there was a a question about human rights and the prolonging of prejudice against the burakumin.
It is a tough spot for Google since they themselves are not doing anything wrong, however the tools they provide could be used in a harmful way. Given that this ability to source so much information is new, I suspect it may be some time before we are able to fully begin to recognize the wide variety of issues that can crop up.
Very interesting. I hadn’t considered it from an archive data point of view.