Month: January 2013

Where are we going with a blog post entitled “Physical Expression, Digital Expression, and the Penis T-Shirt”? Well, if you’ve ever heard of or used Chatroulette, you surely recall the infamous penis problem: a significant proportion of male users would exhibit themselves via this means of online expression. Why then, in the real world, don’t we see the same proportion of men wearing say, t-shirts portraying a photo of their naughty bits?

How does this relate to reelyActive? For months, we’ve operated a live directory on a flatscreen display at Notman House, a startup space in Montreal. The name, face, company and job title of everyone present and carrying one of our tags is displayed for all to see. It’s a project that has been well received, and we postulated on how it could be improved, for instance by allowing the users to generate their own content for the display.

Do you see where we’re going with this?

We asked ourselves if live directories would degenerate into something like the Chatroulette penis problem if users were in control of their own content. It seemed far fetched to think that the startup community at Notman House would jump at the chance to expose themselves on the flatscreen display. But as students of science, we felt compelled to understand the foundation for our sentiment.

The content displayed on the flatscreen is analogous to wearing a t-shirt: you can (and should) expect everyone in the startup house to see it. Therefore, one’s behaviour in selecting content is guided by the same social contract as selecting what t-shirt to wear out of the house. Of course the t-shirts worn at a startup house are likely to differ from those worn at a concert or a sporting event, but in each case, they’re intended for the context, and subject to a real-world audience, their reactions and any ensuing consequences.

In other words, the principles of real-world social interaction equally apply to “digital t-shirts”. We’ve never seen anyone wear a penis t-shirt at Notman House (N.B. that’s not a challenge!), so why should we expect any different for the digital version? As long as digital expression is curated by physical presence, we would expect this to hold true. Time to test the hypothesis!

Disney just announced that they will use RFID wristbands for the patrons of their theme parks (simply Google “Disney RFID” for more than you’d ever want to read). The list of advantages is long: combined room key / park pass, cashless payments, VIP services, personalized interactions with characters, on rides and in lines, etc., and it’s totally opt-in. Sounds like the world-class Disney PR team checked off all the right boxes when pitching this, right?

All persons shall surrender their worldly possessions to Diz-Nee Land. Resistance is futile. Stand in line where directed. Silence!

George Orwell’s estate should get a nickel for every bracelet sold. It may soon become impossible to leave the house without being identified and branded for more endless sales pitches through every means available.

You need to relax; soon enough Disney will isolate the gene responsible for free will, and we’ll have no need to worry.

These quotes from the New York Times article on the announcement highlight the pronounced knee-jerk reaction of many to any mention of human identification through technology: it’s Big Brother.

What about the Internet of Things? It’s effectively the Identity of Things: Things that may be found in homes and carried by people. And the Internet of Things, which has only recently become a hot topic, doesn’t have a Disney PR machine behind it. How’s it doing on the Orwellian front? Well, if the recent article entitled Big Brother’s Big Data: Why We Must Fear The Internet Of Things is any indication, they clearly share an older male sibling.

Will these reactions stop Disney from moving ahead with their plans? Unlikely. Will these reactions stop connected Things in their tracks? Of course not. Will these reactions continue to represent one of the greatest barriers to ubiquitous identification and connection technology? Most certainly. In our previous blog post Connected Things: a decade of progress? we concluded that it’s not technology that’s holding us back. Simply stated, if we want this to happen, we have to want this to happen! An opt-in approach with clear benefits may not be enough: Big Brother equates to a fear of who can access and control the information and with what intent.