Opportunities & Challenges

Dr. John Obenchain

Information Policies, Politics & Power

04:547:400

Class #13

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Work for Class 14

Lecture

• Opportunities & Challenges

Readings:

• Fahrenheit 451
• Brave New World,

- Finish both by December 15^th

Final Exam:

• Will be available online
• Due December 15^th
• No late submissions

Source: http://www.catholicismusa.com/work-is-not-just-a-dollar-game-but-a-spiritual-need-even-for-the-unemployed/

THE FUTURE

Image Source: http://davidatlanta.com/2013/01/future-quick-guide-10-years/

• By 2020 (as per 2017)

• Number of internet connected devices is expected to reach 50

• Increased traffic will have a substantial effect on:

• Networks

• Data Centers

• Smart Connected Products

• Possible Internet of Things [IoT] disruptions can threaten:

• Wearable devices

• Home automation

• Appliances

• Home and Hospital Healthcare

• Remote Monitoring

• Retail and warehousing inventory management

• Connected farms equipment

50,000

50,000,000

50,000,000,000

CENTRALIZATION

• Individual households – running their own servers – would be the best way to safeguard

• Privacy

• Civil Liberties

• Freedom

• Competition

• Consumers are unlikely to do this though

• Few individuals will want to actively administer their own server infrastructure

• Private sector operated cloud-based servers and services are the most attractive & feasible options

• Centralization is increasingly irresistible, especially considering

• The rise of mobile

• Users want to be able to access their data from any device

PERSONAL DATA

• The more devices that connect to the Internet, the more data points there are to collect

• There can be Government pressure to share personal data

• U.S. Patriot Act provides a legal basis for the U.S. Government to access personal data held by companies operating within its jurisdiction

• Not necessary for companies to actually be located within U.S. territory

• Only need some form of US-based commercial presence

• Global companies

• Can process information received in one country, in another country where different regulatory frameworks exist

• Governments can be reluctant to accept foreign companies that refuse to relinquish data held on their domestic servers

DATA WRANGLING

Image Source: https://twitter.com/alexghio

• As immense amounts of information become accessible, data managers are searching for more efficient ways to:

• Round-up the data

• Organize the data

• Data Wranglers figure out how to do this

• Methods of empowering Data Wranglers

• Provide additional resources/tools

• Set clear goals and objectives

• Increase number of team members

• Invest more in training & development

ANONYMITY

Image Source: http://news.mit.edu/2016/stay-anonymous-online-0711

TRUE

FALSE

• Open source intelligence statistical techniques can

• Collect data

• Correlate data

• Triangulate data

• Effective de-anonymizes previously anonymous information

• Right now many people are quite comfortable sharing significant amounts of personal information online

• Social networks

• Current levels of trust in the online world “may” eventually plateau or decrease

ONLINE REVIEWS

• ~67% of online consumers are influenced by online reviews

• Despite the fact that reviews come from strangers

• Helps form an impression of a brand

• Can use review to gather more information

• What type of customers/demographics do you have

• What was most important to them – the Pros & Cons

• How to improve your business

• Evaluating reviewer emotions

• Software will soon be able to gauge user emotions based on word choices, sentence length, and other linguistic/semantic factors

• Peripheral factors

• Certain customers (Middle Managers vs. Teenage Girls)

• Certain times (Summer vs. Spring)

ADVERTISING

GOOD

BAD

• Roughly half of the world’s population has access to the Internet

• Huge market for advertisers

• Enormous source of data

• Adding new/potential customers for advertisers

• Global technology platforms enable large amounts of data to be analyzed

• Can extract useful information

• Programmatic Advertising

• Targets who sees an advertisement

• Targets who sees an advertisement – and when

• Historic data is also useful

• Offers insight into buying behaviors over time

• Correlation with “new data” can lead to predictive purchasing models

HEALTHCARE

GOOD

BAD

Image Source: http://www.pharmanewsonline.com/internet-of-things-opportunities-for-the-pharma-and-health-care-industries/

• Different distributed devices will gather, analyze, and communicate real time medical information

• To open, private, or hybrid clouds

• Possible to collect, store, and analyze big data streams

• Activate context dependent alarms

• Allows continuous and ubiquitous medical data access

• From any connected device over the internet

• Healthcare Organizations

• More efficient, coordinated, user-centric systems

• More integrated, interoperable, ubiquitous, healthcare system

• Greater and easier access to health records

• But for whom??

SUICIDE

GOOD

BAD

• In 2010, a Chinese court ruled that:

• An ISP could be held accountable if it did not report:

• Suicide messages

• Pro-suicide information

• ISP’s data collection could

• Identify individuals at risk of suicide

• Link them to suicide prevention services or organizations

• Identifying suicide discussions is only one step

• How to approach the situation would be another

• Facebook could delete pro-suicide groups reported by users

• May lead to groups reforming elsewhere

ONLINE LENDERS

BAD

GOOD

• Provide borrowers with faster access to credit

• Decisions often made within 48 – 72 hours

• Offer small loans with short-term maturities

• Remittances of funds processed directly from linked bank accounts

• Rely on a variety of funding sources

• Institutional investors

• Hedge funds

• Individual investors

• Venture Capital

• Depository Institutions

• Use electronic data sources to determine the borrower’s identity & credit risk

REAL WORLD EXAMPLE

Image Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/03/bather-giant-woman-sculpture-hamburg_n_917624.html

HAMBURG, GERMANY

• Europe’s third-largest port

• Keeping carrier trucks and ships productive 24/7

• Coordinates

• Facility

• Weather

• Traffic conditions

• Vehicle availability

• Shipment schedule

• Increased container handling capacity by 178%

• Site and facilities have not expanded

NEIL POSTMAN #1

Image Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/fast-food-ads-vs-the-real-thing-2012-1

Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)

• Suggested that society would collapse under the oppression of technologies

• Technologies that undo our capacities to think

• Technologies that we would celebrate rather than fear

• Early advertisements

• Paragraphs composed of long sentences with multiple clauses

• Presumed the consumer was rational enough to carefully decide

• Photography changed the context

• People/products were initially judged by words

• Then they were judged by appearance

• A nice image could sell a product

NEIL POSTMAN #2

• 19^th Century advances (Telegraph/Telephone/Railroad)

• Distance no longer limited the duration of communication

• Permitted conversation between regions that had little to say to one another

• Led to context-free information

• Not tied to any practical function in the listener’s life

• Information became a commodity valuable for being a novelty rather than being important towards informing the public

• Provides the ability to discuss things that will never affect us

• Can only form opinions about the news

• Then those opinions become news

• Speed of transmittal allows little time for reflection or closure

• One piece of information is simply followed by whatever happens next

NEIL POSTMAN #3

• Age of television

• All communication takes the form of entertainment

• Peek-a-boo world

• An event pops into consciousness for a moment and then disappears without any pretense at coherence or closure

• Once upon a time:

• Atrocities would have been communicated as part of a larger context

• The effort required to tell them would have been greater

• Now:

• Atrocities can be related in and of themselves, without context, in an instant

• Decontextualized information:

• Used to create programming for the largest possible audience

• More audience = more $$$

NEIL POSTMAN #4

Image Source: http://www.smokyevening.com/hottest-news-anchors-in-india/

FALSE

TRUE

• Perception of a story’s truth now relies on the appearance of he or she who tells it.

• Do they look honest?

• Stock characters are expected

• Attractive celebrity newscaster

• Comic relief meteorologist

• Blue collar sportscaster

• News stories are not lies

• More like misleading, fragments, pieces of the truth

• Audience has no way to determine if the essence is accurate

• Fake News?

• Americans’ are the best entertained, least-informed, people in the Western World

NEIL POSTMAN #5

• Television commercials have created modern politics

• Political arguments made in 30-second segments

• They rarely make a claim, but often offer a nice picture

• Political discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment

• Commercials no longer make claims to be judged true or false

• They use images/simple language to attract consumers

• We no longer know which candidate is actually best for us

• Only which one projects

a better image

• We are programmed to

ignore anything that does

not amuse

Image Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFDlF1mYJFo

COMMON THEMES

BETTER

WORSE

• Living a public life is the new default

• Not possible to live a modern life without revealing personal information

• Few have the energy, interest, or resources to protect their personal data

• The world’s cultures have different views about privacy

• There is no way they will be able to agree on how to address privacy on the global Internet

• Things will get “worse”

• Information will be available from people’s homes, workplaces, and devices

• Growing incentives for businesses to monetize people’s data

• Easier for governments to monitor behavior

MORE COMMON THEMES

Image Source: https://www.slideshare.net/SkopeBusinessVenture/data-security-and-privacy

• People will get used to living a public life

• Norms will be adjusted

• People will be more sharing

• Collection of data will become a part of life

• Though some may complain

• Most will not object or push back

• People require little more inducement than personal convenience to disclose their personal information

• Lack of publicness will seem anti-social, and creepy

• By 2025 everything will be transparent

• There will be no illusion of privacy

ONLINE PRIVACY

Image source: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/03/trump-signs-repeal-of-us-broadband-privacy-rules.html

• March, 2017

• US House & Senate voted to repeal Internet privacy protections approved by the FCC in 2016

• Would have required Internet Service Providers to get consumers permission before collecting and sharing their data

• Also required to notify customers about the types of information collected and shared

• Argument was that privacy protections would place an undue burden on broadband providers

• While leaving large Internet companies (Facebook, Google) free to collect user data without asking permission

THE FUTURE OF PRIVACY

• In order to “exist” online, one has to put information online

• Items have to be shared in open, public spaces

• If not, people have a lesser chance of:

• Enriching friendships

• Finding and/or growing connections

• Learning new things

• Personal data are the raw material of the knowledge economy

• The capture of personal data lies at the heart of:

• The business models of the most successful technology firms

• Government assumptions about citizens’ relationship to the state

• Vytautas Butrimas:

• “George Orwell may have been an optimist in imaging Big Brother”

Remember This?

Could those involved in Watergate have imagined the 2016 Presidential Election?

YES

NO

White Paper Project

• Due December 8^th by midnight
• 5 – 7 Page Limit
• Submitted via Canvas, Module 14
• Worth 80% of White Paper Grade
• 10%  Writing quality, grammar, no typographical errors
• 30%  Policy recommendations
• 30%  Quality of research and use of resources
• 30%  Quality of analysis, presentation of ideas,

clarity of arguments

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Image Source: http://www.millbank-emo.co.uk/open-public-services-white-paper/

Fahrenheit 451 & Brave New World

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World

Fahrenheit 451

• Guy Montag’s wife and her friends called the alarm on him

• She’d rather sacrifice her home & television than listen to poetry

• Guy burns down his house, then kills Captain Beatty

• Becomes a fugitive

• War is declared, but purposely ignored

• All televisions are focused on the pursuit of Guy Montag

• Guy follows railroad tracks out of the city

• Meets a group of former professors & intellectuals living in nature

• Everyone has memorized a book; they wait until society is ready

• Guy offers part of the Bible that he tried to memorize

• Jet Bombers destroy the city

• Books have survived the war within the minds of the outcasts

Brave New World I

• Bernard decides to take John the Savage, and his mother Linda, back to civilization

• The result is a tragic culture clash between engineered civilization, and the savage culture

- Examples -

• Lenina is upset when John won’t sleep with her immediately

• She is conditioned for instant gratification

• He is conditioned to get married first

• John rushes to the hospital when he hears his mother is dying

• Children have been allowed in to desensitize them to death

• They are amazed at Linda’s appearance (old and overweight)

• John is devastated when his mother dies

• The nurse is concerned that John’s reaction might de-sensitize the children into believing that death is bad

Brave New World II

• The truth, and search for the truth, are purposefully suppressed

• If citizens start thinking, they may realize that their conditioning is done for reasons other than their happiness

• People no longer understand anger, sadness, tragedy

• Emotional passion has been sacrificed for happiness

• No sickness, no old age, no fear of death or misery or suffering

• No need to be saved; no need for God

• Castes are needed

• Alphas think too much to ever be able to get along by themselves

• Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons are needed to do the mindless work

• Science/discovery have become enemies

• Civilization is like an iceberg, with only 1/9 above water

WEEKS 14 - 15

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White Paper:

• Due Tuesday, December 8^th, Midnight

Final Exam:

• Due Tuesday, December 15^th,

Midnight

Late Policy:

• Due to time restriction no late

work will be accepted

• Late submissions will receive a

”0” in the gradebook

Source: http://keywordsuggest.org/gallery/523014.html

Coming Soon…

Any Questions?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-do-you-ask-hard-questions-ayla-kremb