Topic 3.1 - Your Digital Shadow

Information contributed about me by other people, we are not always in control of how we are perceived. This visibility, digital shadows, is determined by search engines. Google is a search engine that uses an algorithm called Page Rank, love the sense of humour with the assistance of pigeons link, hehe. Emphasis is placed on the incoming links - what does this mean? The more people that link to my blog the higher my page ranks, which wads back to Clay Shirky to the those who have power get more power.

Activities; Google ego surfing: my twitter page, Facebook page, wind and water designs website. Blind search.fejus.com Came up with my website, Facebook, twitter, blue caravan and Etsy stores. Has 3 columns and 3 different search engines.

 Spezify (spezify.com) is the coolest so far, told me where the onfrimtuin on me was found, my website was on Yahoo, my Facebook page was found on http://www.profile.ak.fbcdn.net As the web becomes more a 'semantic web' my presence will be reflected by more than what I out up there, friends putting images up and tagging me. This is all from tagging, being connected to people in ways I have no control over, although what about untagging as you can do this on FB. Managing our web presence is about dictating what and how we put things on the web, thus with our central node and ways that people can contribute. Giving google something to find on us, this is why Facebook and twitter works so well with my business name as I have it all linked together and it the efficiency of this allows me to create this impression of my business and me.

Readings; Angewin, J. (2011). How Much Should People Worry About the Loss of Privacy?

Stewart Baker, a partner in Washington, D.C., at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson.
Danah Boyd, a senior researcher at Microsoft Corp.
Jeff Jarvis, an associate professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, whose recent book, "Public Parts”.
Christopher Soghoian, a fellow at the Open Society Institute, created the first browser software—called TACO—that blocked online tracking.

Are all interviewed in this article to discuss the topic; the main point that resonated with me through the other readings is that we innately want to be social but we don’t want that sharing to be available to everyone.. Online privacy , the discussion discusses that we want to be involved online but Jarvis eludes that our privacy is protected its our public ness that we need to be more guarded about. boyd points out that 'most people don’t have the ability to make informed decisions about how they engage in public' and argued that restrictions were required to limit how data can be used to harm people. Calling for transparency from powerful entities about their data practices.

Mr Baker, pointed out that we will adjust just as when Facebook introduced timelines and people could see what the other person was doing on FB that they/we choose to out this information online, to reveal it to our friends, so either don't be so liberal with who friend in FB and keep the info you share monitored. The man who invented privacy, Louis Brandeis, was appalled to have his photo taken and published without his permission. Just as photography when introduced was seen as a violation of privacy when someone could take your picture and publish it is a technology we have adapted to.

The cost of free content; Facebook observes our browsing activities on non-Facebook sites as long as the Like button is present, then they allow 3rd party developers to have access to that. This information is collected by 'parasitic firms' that track what we research either conditions, travel plans, interests etc, so the use of surfing the web and Internet sites does come at a price, the collection of data on our habits online. How this will affect people? It depends on your situation, whether you are looking to be insured and they know you have been researching conditions that could be fatal, identity theft, hence keeping your birth date off the net. It is impossible to keep this information completely secure, alarm bells. The cost of protecting privacy, it may inhibit advertising, cause less content online, exclude children from being on social networking sites till they are 13 or above. Will these laws cause damage on the time that we make our adjustment to this new technology which we eventually will become desensitised. 9/11 is an example of not sharing intel or being able to print name searchers, which is a sore point on the ease it could have been prevented but this new technology wasn't accepted as a necessary due to privacy laws. Is this really the cause of 9/11 or just a contributing factor in a ladder of missteps.

The fear of the last governments breaking privacy laws, tapping phones, there is a requirement for privacy laws but if there is a person of interest for criminal offences then there can be rules for inception but other than that the general person, privacy rules.

Angewin, J. (2011). How Much Should People Worry About the Loss of Privacy? Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204577024262567105738.html

 Lecture Digital Shadows; Google is always dynamically changing its results based on my language etc. Google stays faithful to which web page has the most links to it. Google has only been the dominant search engine for less than 10 years and this will change. Spezify, it tries to organise its information visually, text it finds a way to make an image from it. Different search engines prioritise different things, so change the images for spezify. As tools change we need to be conscious of how information changes in certain ways, I.e photos, text, etc. Google, through the policy introduced a legal rite in Germany, it's an outbreak in privacy, not a law being broken anywhere else that google when someone complains removes the images.

Danah boyd has discussed an 'opt-out privacy' which says something about the individual in what they want to withdraw, so it becomes the individual responsibility. Reputation, when your searching you look for information about someone to work a reputation about that person. You will need a reputation to be able to be employed, as it will be a core part of whether you get to be a journalist, as an example. An existing reputation is a barrier against false information being posted about you. So if there is limited information about you online whatever is there is going to be loud as it isn't being dulled in the other information about you online, so there is a contradiction in privacy, as other people in this matter will design what your online reputation is like. The ability to create and share with people has become so easy to due to our mobility with technology. Back to star wars kid, 10 years after the fact, the Wikipedia link, photos, then some articles about how you prevent this happening to you online. This shows how long this reputation of you/him has lasted online. How do we build a river of information about ourselves that tells the story that we want to tell.


Reading Future of Reputation; by D Solove The progress of first printed media by Jonathon Gutenberg in the 15th century, made access to information easier, as it was written by hand before, but people were still illiterate so it was still limited. Then number of papers printed increased by 900% from 1850-1890 in America. Then news, online and on tv today is available 24/7, though we can not appear on there and now we have blogging and social media platforms that allows the niello fence of the many to increase our involvement our push for being educated and to think globally instead of what is happening in our street or suburb or city. 'Were living in the next media revolution, this time we are the media' inspiring thought. Bloggers, of which a small amount make an income from, are a source of information for editors as due to location and inside information they can have more pull, be in more locations etc than the manpower of media organisations.


They are an inspiration for story ideas. Elle and other fashion mags use the same images or similar looks, whereas the Satorialist and other fashion bloggers take a different point of view, I have scaled back magazine purchases and scour those sites instead. Our reputation is our most cherished asset, the importance that reputation has on our social structure and acceptance is reflected in the sentence poised by blah blah as even though our speech is free it may fall on deaf ears if our reputation is tarnished. Reputation is also used to preserve social control, people not using your service as it wasn't good, therefore feedback and positive and negative responses on eBay, etsy etc allow you to confidently buy due to seeing what other people said. There was a time when due to lifestyle we were becoming more insulated and it is said shorter with patience and poor behaviour. Though through the Internet and social media we are connecting with our friends and family but connecting with our weaker ties even thou to those they know us through snippets of information that is easily and hastily read. For me this allows me to connect with my wholistic friends, fashion friends and mum friends and be the different me to each of them and their networks.

Lightbulb moment, with more of the assimilation of this book and the facts or views it reflects on. 'A man's character is what he is; a man's reputation is what other people may imagine him to be.'. The web has created a free democracy of speech, whether it creates or crashes a reputation is in some part ours to control and in others, depending on our behaviour publicly what others say about us.. Facebook's privacy train wreck; exposure, invasion and social convergence. Interesting point about evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar; she discusses that we need to gossip, networks connect, for the same reason monkeys like to groom, to keep up with the social world around them. Though we like monkeys can only socialise with so many people, they can groom only do so many monkeys. Thus beware the RSS feeds as they can lead to a data overload, yep I'm finding that, I have 1800 updates to read so far. I did catch up on 30 today. Cognitive addiction to social information is great for Facebook because news feeds makes FB sticky. People relish personal information because it is the currency of social hierarchy and connectivity.we trust others who share, it's in our biological structure to do so, friendships are built on mutual knowledge.

Bloggers for instance from their posts may seem familiar to the reader but to the blogger there may not be that communication so that unfamiliar relationship that the reader may want may be beyond the blogger, like when clients want to friend me on FB. A fake sense of intimacy. What is social convergence it is where people from different paths meet on a social platform. danah boyd describes it as when we have ways to act in certain social settings that makes us feel comfortable but social media makes it so that the act or discussion can is taken out of context and greyed leaving it open to how people will perceive the sharing. Example Leonie being captured and shared and her image giving one perception whereas hers was different. This was never an issue before as people being able to see those images had to be shown it by lengthier means, also weaker ties don't usually have access to that kind of intimacy usually.

But with technology convergence comes social convergence and the reason why we feel insecure about it is information and images are taken out of context and for the most part we have no control over it. Is this because the main user does not engage in understanding all the technology can do for them and just educate themselves with how to use the new technology for the desired needs they have for it, business or social. Without reading the fine print, of what is theirs and what through posting becomes everybody's. Danah argues that with any convergence there is a loss of control. Social convergence is here to stay so it just depends on how we will adjust to it..

Reference; boyd, danah (2008). "Facebook's Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence." Convergence, 14 (1), http://www.danah.org/papers/FacebookPrivacyTrainwreck.pdf.

Note; after linking lots of photos from my tumblr account and I couldn't find Irene's style sessions before that and after 2 weeks of linking to and from my main node to support nodes to get a result on my search.