1. Legibility, Privacy and Creativity:
Linked Data in a Surveillance Society
Christopher Brewster
(Aston University)
and
Dougald Hine
(http://dougald.co.uk )
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2. Introduction:
“Slipping through the raindrops”
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3. Legibility
•
Concept comes from James Scott’s Seeing like a State -- desire of the
state to “arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state
functions of taxation, conscription and prevention of rebellion”
•
Typically expressed in maps, catalogues, standards, and many types of
infrastructure.
•
Initiatives included building roads, single currencies, cadastral maps,
imposition of a single language, census, ID cards and video surveillance.
•
Privacy is a specific form of illegibility. Due to inability on part of the
state to capture data.
•
Much technological progress driven by or resulted in increased legibility
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Closely related to concept of “that which is measured is managed”
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4. Privacy and Anonymity
•
•
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Privacy is a modern phenomenon found in the city
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Telecommunications and the Internet have “shrunk” the
globe -- McLuhan’s “Global Village” is a reality
Privacy did not exist in the village or nomadic tribe
Privacy arises due to atomisation and alienation and the
technological gap between the creation of cities and the
need for legibility
•
•
As a village, we have also lost privacy:
•
Unintentional loss via telecom metadata, cross-site
tracking, video surveillance
Consensual loss via social media, cookies, bank cards
etc.
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5. Types of Freedom
•
•
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Privacy currently seen as a human right
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We now can communicate around the globe at almost zero cost great freedom but loss of privacy
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With each technology, different groups gain freedoms, others lose e.g.
railways lines, digital file copying
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Freedom to be creative, to innovate, typically has occurred in cities
... but really is just one type of freedom among many
Much of technology provides some freedoms and removes others e.g.
road networks
•
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Usually explained as due to cluster of ideas, skills, opportunities.
Perhaps illegibility is important factor (e.g. Internet)
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6. The Semantic Web, Linked Data and IoT
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Core capability of Semantic Web and IoT is naming of things
•
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URIs and IP addresses provide unique “names”
Linked Data and Open Data represent a vision of ever more data on all
human activity
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Open Data is politically acceptable face of a transparent total
surveillance society
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SW and IoT are standards like weights and measures, roads, etc.
Potentially provide specific freedoms, and limit others
•
SW and IoT are part of ongoing project to make everything more
legible (to the State)
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7. Unintended Consequences
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A society with total surveillance:
•
•
•
loses trust
has a tendency to conform
everything will be known rather than explored (cf. Google
Glass)
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8. Unintended Consequences - 2
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Most worrying - potential loss of
creativity
•
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Loss of creativity and innovation will
make society incapable of change.
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•
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Village societies are stable but no or
limited complex civilisation, limited
arts, limited innovation
Parallel with USSR, they were good at
chess, gymnastics, and poor at
innovation.
Total security = total classification
Total classification = one may not be able
to think the other
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9. Conclusions
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Semantic Web and IoT may provide
some new freedoms
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but may reduce the illegible
space
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loss of illegibility potentially very
damaging
•
•
•
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culturally
politically
agility and innovation
What next? Keep looking for the
spaces between the raindrops.
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10. Acknowledgements
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Funding: This work was partially supported by the FI PPP FIspace project (http://www.fispace.eu )
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Images:
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http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RAIN_DROP_TREES.jpg
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http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/morris/31-Dot-Map-Jewish-Pop-Amsterdam.jpg
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/taedc/9314162413/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/500hats/795842899/
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http://www.opinno.com/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/screenshotamphionforumintelkeynote-2012.jpeg
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/ross/63787005/
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