So I've been thinking a lot lately about personal data and information sharing, and exactly what it is companies do with that data. Mostly as a result of some class discussions, Google's updated privacy policy, and because I'm the kind of geek that thinks about these things. If "it's all about the data", then thinking about what constitutes the data, how it's collected, who's collecting it, and what they're doing with it are all highly relevant concerns.
I like to frame ideas about how we choose to provide companies with our data around three different concepts:
1) "Frequent buyer" cards
2) Google and other "trackers"
3) Facebook
These are two wildly different modes of data collection. Let me explain why.
1) Frequent buyer cards
Also known as rewards cards, member cards, etc., you have to fill out some kind of application to get one of these, in which you provide some basic personal information and in essence agree to let the company use that information and the card to track purchases you make. Whether they sell this info to other companies or use it for their own nefarious purposes depends a lot on the company and the fine print on the card. In general we tend not to mind these kinds of data collection because we reap benefits from it--in essence, we are compensated for our data (or, as J.Z. put it in class today, we are monetizing our own data). This compensation comes in the form of coupons, deals off the standard price, early notice of sales, etc. I don't carry many of these, but I do have a Wegman's Shoppers Club card. Regardless of your personal views on Wegman's, you have to admit that they know their data. I've been contacted by them twice in the last 8 months or so, both times relating to purchases I'd made. The first was to notify me that they'd recalled all bulk pine nuts (which we fairly frequently) due to concerns about salmonella. In this case, I have to say I was appreciative, as my personal health was at stake. (Let's ignore the fact that we'd eaten nearly all of them.) The second time was to let me know that their store-brand mushrooms--which we buy on a somewhat regular basis--were now going to be sourced closer to home but, consequently, there'd be some down time before the new ones would be in store. They suggested name brand alternatives to the store brand.
Both of these are uses of my information that I don't particularly mind, as they benefited me in some form personally or financially.
2) Google
Google is perhaps the best example of a company that takes our use of its product to track as much information as possible. You use their search engine, email, YouTube, etc., and in turn they track info about you. In theory this is to provide more targeted advertising to you, though we all have our suspicions about what else they do with it.
The new privacy policy, which seems to simply make these practices more transparent, really seems to have ticked some folks off--I've heard arguments that Google represents a monopoly and, without an opt-out option, we are now "forced" into this data collection. (Mind you, this is more or less the same data collection they've been doing for years...they're just telling you all the details now.) Threats to abandon Google altogether have ensued.
At some level, how is Google's "targeted" advertising stream any different than Wegman's letting me know about the canned mushrooms? I'm using a service they provide, they're tracking what I do with that service, and making suggestions based on a history (using some algorithms to filter through to find relevant patterns). If you believe Google is a monopoly, I suppose you have a valid argument that I can't choose to go somewhere else, but goodness knows there are other search providers, email providers, etc. (most of whom do the same thing but don't do it as well and aren't as transparent about their actions).
3) Facebook
Contrast the Google outrage with people's willingness to hand over to Facebook pretty much every sordid detail of their lives. Where they go, what they do, who they do it with, what music they listen to, what news stories they read, etc. And if you're one of those Facebook game-players, you're usually giving just about all of that data out to any of the third parties' apps you're using, as well.
And yet people rarely get up in arms about Facebook collecting information. Maybe we grumble about a new privacy policy that makes the more diligent of us have to adjust our privacy settings, or complain about how friends lists are displayed, but overall we keep using the thing.
Why is it that Google being more transparent causes us such outrage, but we'll willingly post work histories, highly personal details, embarrassing photos, and politically charged commentary on Facebook? Is the mere fact that we are doing this willingly the difference? I could argue I use Google willingly. Is it that Facebook is less forthcoming about what they do with those hundreds of pages worth of data they're saving about us, so we're content to live in an ignorant bliss about their actions? I must admit, the distinction is one that does not entirely make sense to me...
And what about privacy? Where exactly does that factor into all of this? We've been allowing companies to track a lot of our data for quite a long time, so stopping it seems highly unlikely. Is the key to be selective about who we choose to let track that information? Is it even possible to choose that any longer?
Perhaps the greatest irony is how willingly we as a culture have embraced this lack of culture. People sleep with their smart phones; Facebook addiction is now a recognized condition (aptly abbreviated to FAD: Facebook Addiction Disorder); and we are plugged in all the time--all that time feeding ever greater quantities of personal data into various heads of this data-collected hydra.
And on that happy note, I'm going to go unplug and walk in the snow.
2.17.2012
1.26.2012
Apparently, telling people that you're studying database management is roughly equivalent to telling them you're about to have a root canal. Usually they grimace and say something like: "I'm so sorry--that must be so boring." What I always want to say at this point is something along the lines of "No. If it was boring, I wouldn't bother studying it." Instead, I usually bite my tongue.
People who knew me in my previous professional incarnation, teaching college-level writing with an M.A. in writing, one of those students everyone says "should" get a Ph.D. in English--always seem to be the most surprised by this. Not that I've switched fields--English is, after all, notoriously horrible for job prospects, and adjuncting teaching English is about the lowest of the low--but that I've switched to something so different. Writing is often viewed as creative or even touchy feely. Databases, by contrast, tend to be seen as dry and about as anti-touch-feely as you can get. (And if you're cuddling up with your databases at night...well, I suspect broader society does not view this kindly.) English is the land of "there is no right answer"; databases, as with many other tech fields, seem to have clearcut rules and boundaries.
However, the two are not as dissimilar as you might think. I could give you an incredibly long list as to why I think the overlap is so significant, extolling the virtues of human-centered technical design, the need for effective communication in data design and user interfaces, that they're both essentially "knowledge worker" fields.
Instead, let me explain my shift in two simple words: encyclopedic novel.
Yes, most of you know even less about this concept than databases. And yes, I saw that grimace.
As a writing student, I was (and still remain) fascinated by postmodern writing fiction. (Don't get me wrong; postmodernism in general is fascinating, but I particularly adore postmodern fiction.) This is work that has a certain level of self-awareness, at times tongue-in-cheek, at times downright intellectually snobbish. (James Joyce being more or less the apex of intellectual snobbery, though whether he's a modernist or postmodernist is debatable. Hopefully you at least know who he is.)
Postmodern fiction is, for example, Michael Martone's Blue Guide to Indiana, styled after a travel guide but based around a fictitious version of the United States in which Indiana is its own country. Or the type of stories that use parenthetical asides and footnotes to add to the text. These are not, exactly, texts that many people find enjoyable.
The encyclopedic novel is a certain subset of postmodernism. For example, many people consider David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest to be the greatest encyclopedic novel ever written. Over a thousand pages, the last two hundred or so end notes fleshing out obscure details or sometimes entire conversations from the main text, many things described in an excruciating level of detail. Encyclopedic, as in trying to describe the whole of human experience.
These types of work fascinated me more than any other. They inundate you with detail, at times delightful and at times agonizingly frustrating. The genius in them is both because of the sheer level of observational and writing skill required to gather and present that much detail and their author's amazing abilities at tying ALL of those things together. (IJ being an exquisite example of this. That is, if you don't set it on fire after the first 200 pages.) Something about the in-your-face, uncensored, nearly unfiltered details in these works struck me as truly saying something about the world we live in today--always plugged in, inundated with advertisements, so many details that it's easy to lose your sense of the big picture or overarching narrative arc. We are interrupted; we multi-task while we're multi-tasking. We are nearly always doing something.
Information overload.
Is it really such a far cry from that to information management? To seeing patterns and value within the patterns of information, to wanting to analyze and experiment with it to make it do more than it's capable of doing on its own? To give people the tools to make effective decisions which they would otherwise not make if left to sift through the information on their own?
Pattern recognition. Figuring out how things are put together (or should be to attain their desired effect). Considering always the reader/end-user and how to best encourage or force them in the direction you want. Choosing tools and configurations that help pave the way to that end goal.
These are not dissimilar. I daresay I am better prepared for this than many of my techno-only counterparts, because I have learned to be sharply analytical of things that do not make sense. I have had to revise (or in tech-speak: iterate) sometimes obscene amounts to get the desired result. As with writing, you have to know the rules so that you know when breaking the rules is necessary.
Databases are like puzzles. They're like encyclopedic novels that you must tease apart to filter out the noise and throw into stark relief the salient points. They are not root canals. They are not boring.
People who knew me in my previous professional incarnation, teaching college-level writing with an M.A. in writing, one of those students everyone says "should" get a Ph.D. in English--always seem to be the most surprised by this. Not that I've switched fields--English is, after all, notoriously horrible for job prospects, and adjuncting teaching English is about the lowest of the low--but that I've switched to something so different. Writing is often viewed as creative or even touchy feely. Databases, by contrast, tend to be seen as dry and about as anti-touch-feely as you can get. (And if you're cuddling up with your databases at night...well, I suspect broader society does not view this kindly.) English is the land of "there is no right answer"; databases, as with many other tech fields, seem to have clearcut rules and boundaries.
However, the two are not as dissimilar as you might think. I could give you an incredibly long list as to why I think the overlap is so significant, extolling the virtues of human-centered technical design, the need for effective communication in data design and user interfaces, that they're both essentially "knowledge worker" fields.
Instead, let me explain my shift in two simple words: encyclopedic novel.
Yes, most of you know even less about this concept than databases. And yes, I saw that grimace.
As a writing student, I was (and still remain) fascinated by postmodern writing fiction. (Don't get me wrong; postmodernism in general is fascinating, but I particularly adore postmodern fiction.) This is work that has a certain level of self-awareness, at times tongue-in-cheek, at times downright intellectually snobbish. (James Joyce being more or less the apex of intellectual snobbery, though whether he's a modernist or postmodernist is debatable. Hopefully you at least know who he is.)
Postmodern fiction is, for example, Michael Martone's Blue Guide to Indiana, styled after a travel guide but based around a fictitious version of the United States in which Indiana is its own country. Or the type of stories that use parenthetical asides and footnotes to add to the text. These are not, exactly, texts that many people find enjoyable.
The encyclopedic novel is a certain subset of postmodernism. For example, many people consider David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest to be the greatest encyclopedic novel ever written. Over a thousand pages, the last two hundred or so end notes fleshing out obscure details or sometimes entire conversations from the main text, many things described in an excruciating level of detail. Encyclopedic, as in trying to describe the whole of human experience.
These types of work fascinated me more than any other. They inundate you with detail, at times delightful and at times agonizingly frustrating. The genius in them is both because of the sheer level of observational and writing skill required to gather and present that much detail and their author's amazing abilities at tying ALL of those things together. (IJ being an exquisite example of this. That is, if you don't set it on fire after the first 200 pages.) Something about the in-your-face, uncensored, nearly unfiltered details in these works struck me as truly saying something about the world we live in today--always plugged in, inundated with advertisements, so many details that it's easy to lose your sense of the big picture or overarching narrative arc. We are interrupted; we multi-task while we're multi-tasking. We are nearly always doing something.
Information overload.
Is it really such a far cry from that to information management? To seeing patterns and value within the patterns of information, to wanting to analyze and experiment with it to make it do more than it's capable of doing on its own? To give people the tools to make effective decisions which they would otherwise not make if left to sift through the information on their own?
Pattern recognition. Figuring out how things are put together (or should be to attain their desired effect). Considering always the reader/end-user and how to best encourage or force them in the direction you want. Choosing tools and configurations that help pave the way to that end goal.
These are not dissimilar. I daresay I am better prepared for this than many of my techno-only counterparts, because I have learned to be sharply analytical of things that do not make sense. I have had to revise (or in tech-speak: iterate) sometimes obscene amounts to get the desired result. As with writing, you have to know the rules so that you know when breaking the rules is necessary.
Databases are like puzzles. They're like encyclopedic novels that you must tease apart to filter out the noise and throw into stark relief the salient points. They are not root canals. They are not boring.
1.14.2012
I have now successfully exported all of my old blog entries (from 2000-2004) and deleted them. They are a weird catalog of a person I used to be but also contain an awful lot of fluff and teen/20-something angst, and it is fairly liberating to have them removed.
I'm envisioning this blog to now be updated for less frequently but with far more meaningful posts, as there are a lot of things I mentally chew on but don't really talk about, and this seems a good place to share them with the handful of you who will actually read this.
I'm envisioning this blog to now be updated for less frequently but with far more meaningful posts, as there are a lot of things I mentally chew on but don't really talk about, and this seems a good place to share them with the handful of you who will actually read this.
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