I’m reading a book called ”The Social Study of Information and Communication Technology”. One part of the book takes up an example that shows how a tool can be perceived very differently from a slight incident. They are unaware of the surveillance until they see it and they don’t like the spying on their every action even if they have nothing to hide.

”The case dealt with a fairly large application of Lotus Notes used for new product development within a worldwide team-based organization. Dedicated Notes applications were built to allow multidisciplinary and multinational teams to work jointly on common projects, regardless of distance between locations. Implementation of the new system was carried out according to a participative methodology, an incremental introduction of the system, and comprehensive training. Usage was immediate, ubiquitous, and successful. One day, however, a cheering message broadcasted over the network by a top marketing manager in London made every user realize that the new transparent platform could be deployed by headquarters as a powerful controlling eye, able to access any working document and local bulletin board of all the distant teams. Such a possibility made usage fall immediately and significantly. Attempts to revamp the system succeeded only when the applications were redesigned to replicate the pre-existing routines and organizational structures, thus losing much of the original innovative design, transparency, and collaboration opportunities.
This case provides evidence, among other things, about the ambiguity of new technology. Despite the careful planning and design, and the extensive training, the new groupware technology appeared to the user suddenly as an ambivalent, threatening stranger. The latent tensions between the professional dimension and the existential one exploded as a consequence of a small incident” (p. 26)

This story tells us a lot of useful things. One of the most significant ones being that the average user is very unaware of what the technique actually does and how it can be used until someone ”misuses” it. The surveillance of people is normally not a problem as long as they are not aware of it.

Another issue that becomes clear through this is that people are not comfortable sharing everything with others even if they have nothing to hide. Right now there is a lot of argument about not having to be afraid of surveillance unless you have something to hide. This is clearly not the case in this example.

The third thing we learn is how little is needed to shift the usage and opinions of people. Find the right thing to say and we can change everything instantly. One wrong (or right) thing to say changes the focus of the mass from seeing a productive and efficient tool to seeing a tool for controlling and spying.

Social Media is relatively new for most people and many are still exploring the possibilities and uses of it. One of the things that happen with social media is that we become more transparent, we share more of our self to more people then we normally do. This transparency is good in some ways and less good in some.

There’s been several stories of sharing too much information on social media. One example is the case where a British women forgot she had befriended her boss on Facebook.

Another example is the recent case of a Swedish guy who published a picture of himself where he wore a cap with the text ”porn star”. His problem was that parents had seen the picture and the principal called him up and fired him from the childcare center he was working at.

When do people share too much information? I recently found the site pleaserobme.com which wants to make people aware of the risks of telling too much about themself to the world.

The goal of this website is to raise some awareness on this issue and have people think about how they use services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc.

The website lists everyone that displays their status on Twitter as being away from home. Not in itself a dangerous feature but coupled with a quick search on the persons name on a site that lists where they live (e.g. hitta.se in Sweden) it’s an easy way to rob them without risk.

Keep being transparent but reflect on how and what you share with the world!

[Re-posting this since I lost my posts from my old blog. First time posted two weeks after SIME 09 this fall].

I was following the SIME Stockholm conference remotely through blogs and twitter. I was not at the conference or the workshop. The following is only my opinions based on the knowledge I got from the conference.

SIME (Scandinavian Interactive Media Event) gathers many persons that are into media and the conference is inspirational to many. These visitors then share what they learn through their own networks and knowledge is omnipresent as it should be. This is the reason I was so surprised when I saw this tweet:

RT @dustboy Huh? Transparens? RT @tjompa: Eh, reglerna för workshopen är: inga tweets & inga citat. Strange. #sime09
[Huh? Transparancy? Eh, rules for the workshop are: no tweets & no quotations. Strange.]

There was some discussion around this and since it was one of the first workshops for the SIME 09 conference some thought it might be new policy from the organizers this year but this was quickly denied through a tweet.

RT @simeblog: PLZ RT #SIME09 vill att ni twittrar . Om någon som håller i en Workshop vill annorlunda, så ber vi er att respektera det.
[SIME09 wants you to twitter. If someone organizing a workshop wants something else, we ask you to respect this.]

The workshop that applied the “no tweets and no quotations” policy was titled Changing giants – how traditional companies has transformed to digital. It was moderated by Bob Stumpel (Result) and the two experts present were Dan Ochterlony (Schibsted) and Claudia Gonzalez (UNHCR). The workshop started out with one of them saying: “I will tell you a lot and it is without sugarcoating but please don’t tweet/quote me etc” (quoted by someone that broke the rules). The question is why these persons applied the “no tweets and no quotation rule” and restricted the transparency and flow of knowledge?

A few possible explanations for the limited transparency:

1. They were over-stepping boundaries and talking about knowledge that could hurt the companies they were talking about (or themself if it came out they had revealed those “secrets”).

2. The information during the workshop was nothing new or innovating. It was shallow enough to restrict them using it again in other situations if it was shared.

Other explanations on why people want to limit the transparency at a workshop?

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I previously (before I lost my database) got some replies on this post from Mahesh who was working at SIME. He confimed my first guess on why the limitation on transparency was implemented in that workshop. I’ll re-post part of that conversation here.

Mahesh:
Hi, thanks for pointing out the whole side of the story. As you mentioned, the moderators and experts in the workshops wanted to give their maximum knowledge and share their learnings and that included some information that is generally not shared. Hence, the no tweet policy during that particular workshop alone. And oh btw, #sime09 was the second most tweeted word during the 2 days in Scandinavia and that I believe could not have happened with a “no tweet” policy

Me:
This question about restricting content is very interesting seeing what is happening today. An example of this is Newscorp restricting their transparency by locking away content from google.
Would this way of making a profit be an alternative for SIME in the future? Locking content by applying a no tweet / quotation policy on some workshops / presentations and making people pay in order to take part of the content from those?

Mahesh:
Hi, I think the best things in life, especially knowledge should be free online. I think its great you are able to cover the conference without even attending it, and that is the power of spreading knowledge. A pay per view idea might not be all bad considering we have some great speakers, but we should tie it down with more interesting content and discussions to make it more meaningful for a person to engage online as much as he / she does when at the conference. Food for thought for 2010 I am sure