One reaction is to diversify: Hotmail instead of Gmail, MapQuest instead of Google Maps, AOL Instant Messenger instead of Google Chat ’ though that would mean losing the accumulated benefits of linked services. Another reasonable response is to focus efforts on improving our (new) media literacy so that we’re more mindful of how much even free stuff can still cost. If we don’t force ourselves to be aware of those trade-offs, we risk stumbling into an increasing dependence on yet one more company that’s too big to fail.

From Google Everywhere by Nancy Scola in The American Prospect.

Google pretty much runs my life right now, and considering this recent Buzz fuck-up, I’m not okay with that. Facebook’s handling of privacy and user data issues are precisely why I avoid it. Now that Google is trying to out Facebook Facebook, I might go in the same direction.

Trading privacy for convenience is not something I oppose. Hell, Amazon has an 11 year search and purchase history on me and does a pretty effective job of getting me to buy more stuff because of it.

I had few problems with GMail at first because the targeted advertising is automated. But I am not a fan of articulating every social connection I have in public. Yes I am on Twitter, but it is a mostly a mix of people I know, people I sort of know, and people I don’t know at all. My email connections are different because they contain information about connections to people that I have not otherwise articulated in public and connections that are very loose. That’s Buzz’ fatal flaw as far as I am concerned: it assumes a lot of things. Sometimes that’s good because it assumes incorrectly — it obfuscates. And sometimes that’s very bad.

That Google made Buzz opt-out shows either stupidity, callousness, or arrogance. Not cool with any of the above. It’s encouraging that they’ve since made it easy to opt out. But I think the original decision is a sign of the decision-making culture at Google. My advice is to use Google services carefully.

In a country where about one-third of the population regularly goes online, the internet gives women “a place to vent out our frustrations and our dreams,“ said Reem Asaad, 37, a professor of banking and finance in the Saudi port city of Jeddah who blogs at reemasaad.blogspot.com.

This reminds me of danah boyd‘s research into teenagers’s use of social sites such as Facebook and MySpace. She has suggested teens use these sites for identity formation and community connection in the way they used to do in malls, parking lots and other public spaces that we’ve collectively chased them out of. Given Saudi Arabia’s severe restrictions on women in public spaces, I think a similar phenomenon is happening here.

On the one hand, the ghetto is a part of a city historically defined by race and class. On the other hand, being ghetto refers to a set of tastes that emerged as poor people of color developed fashion and cultural artifacts that proudly expressed their identity. Just as physical spaces and tastes are organized around and shaped by race and class, so too are digital environments.

From “White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook” by danah boyd. [Draft; PDF file]

By and large, those who are looking are those who hold power over the person being observed. Parents look. Teachers look. Employers look. Governments look. Corporations look. These people are often looking to judge or manipulate. Given the powerful position they are in, those doing the looking often think that they have the right to look. The excuse is simple: “it’s public.” But do they have the right to judge? The right to manipulate? This, of course, is the essence of conversations about surveillance. And so we argue and argue and argue about the right to privacy in public spaces.

From danah boyd‘s “Do you See What I See?: Visibility of Practices through Social Media”.

Also see: My earlier posts Ethics, friendships and Flickr and Twitter, privacy, and informational self-determination.

As networked technologies proliferate around the world, we can assume that there is a channel of distribution available to everyone and between everyone. In theory, anyone could get content to anyone else. With the barriers to distribution collapsing, what matters is not the act of distribution, but the act of consumption. Thus, the power is no longer in the hands of those who control the channels of distribution, but those who control the limited resource of attention. This is precisely why YOU were the Person of the Year. Your attention is precious and valuable. It’s no longer about push; it’s about pull. And the law of two feet is now culturally pervasive.

Yeah, we know that and live that, right? But danah explains why and how this current Web2.0 wave is different from the early adopter wave/