Posts tagged Case
Cellphones, Police and One Court Case in a Sea of Change
Mar 27th
Change. We think about this word a lot. Politicians and pundits, reporters and innovators, we are obsessed with this notion of change. How social media changed the Arab Spring. How the iPhone changed the very nature of telephony. The fact of the matter is that change is not some overnight phenomenon. Effective change, the type of change that actually makes a difference, involves a series of events and often takes years to take shape. Unrelated instances become interconnected events that in turn make people take notice. When change comes, we may not even realize that it has happened.
Take the case of Simon Glik, a lawyer who was arrested in October 2007 in Boston. Glik saw a young man being arrested on Tremont Street near the Boston Common. Thinking the arrest looked forceful, Glik pulled out his cellphone and recorded the event. Minutes later, he himself was arrested and charged with illegal electronic surveillance. Today, Glik was awarded a $170,000 settlement from the City of Boston in a civil suit he had filed against the city. Neither Glik himself, nor his cell phone, were agents of change. But they were a piece of interconnected events that have been building up to change.
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Agents of Change
This is not a tale about how “product X changes outcome Y.” In that story, cell phones change the nature of the relationship between civilians and public officials. That storyline has been beaten to death in the media and Glik’s case is certainly not a new one. Nor is it unique. Jon Surmacz, a Web producer at Boston University, was arrested in December 2008 under similar circumstances. Charges against him were later dropped, which has become a familiar pattern. In the 7th Circuit Appeals Court in Illinois the American Civil Liberties Union is currently challenging the Illinois Eavesdropping Act as unconstitutional. In Baltimore, instances where citizens record the police crop up again and again, which has led the Baltimore Police Department to codify its rules on how officers are supposed to react. Examples of citizens recording police go back to the advent of the portable video recorder. The infamous Rodney King case would have never happened had a citizen not been there to get it on tape.
If we take a step back and look at all of these events, the conclusion we draw is that advances in technology have created a rift between civilians and authorities. The technology progresses, becomes more advanced and ubiquitous, and lawmakers do not have the wherewithal to keep up with the speed of innovation. Clashes occur. People get hurt. Sometimes, people die.
The case of Glik and other similar situations are a micro issue within the macro context of change. Change and technology are cyclical.
Change and the Evolution of Communication
Seventy years after Johannes Gutenberg created the first printing press, Martin Luther translated the Bible from Latin into German. Thanks to the printing press, that translation became hugely influential, reshaping the German language and eventually resulting in what we know now as the King James Bible. English philosopher Francis Bacon would eventually say typography, as introduced by the printing press, “changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.” The printing press led to the evolution of media, what we now call, “the press.” The press, as a medium, has gone on to cause massive change over authorities and regimes for the last 400-plus years.
In the 1950s, communism spread through parts of Europe. Berlin, in the center of the Germany that Martin Luther had changed centuries before, was split in two. On one side lived free Western-style Germans, free to the amenities and evolutions that technology afforded them. The press was not restricted in West Germany and, like most of Western civilization, information would start to flow freely as the technology that disseminated it advanced. At first, the primary vehicle was the radio. Later it became television. In the East, Germans had both televisions and radios, but much of their communication with the Western world was strangled through government-controlled media.
That would not last forever. While many people will credit Ronald Reagan or George Bush for bringing down the Berlin Wall, neither person was the deciding factor. Often overlooked in history is how shifts and innovations in the nature of communication have induced change. While Western diplomatic pressure may have helped bring down the Wall, the government of East Germany could not keep Western media from coming through those radios and televisions. It was not the technology that brought down the wall, but the information that flowed through it.
While it is still too early in historical cycles to determine what factors heavily influenced the Arab Spring, there is little doubt the ease of information flowing between the participants was a major factor. Whether that was through cellular devices, social media, radio, television or other media will be debated for years to come. Likely, it was a combination of all of the above. Malcolm Gladwell was right. Social media did not cause the Arab Spring; the fundamental change in the way information flows from one point to another did.
The Micro Within the Macro Cycle
Back to Glik. Well, not precisely. This story was never about Glik, the ACLU or cellphones. Glik’s scenario is but a vehicle to tell a story. A story of change.
Glik’s circumstance brings together a variety of agents. A cellphone. Authority figures. Federal and local courts. A prominent city. Because of the Glik case, most of Massachusetts as well as many jurisdictions within the realm of the First Circuit Court of Appeals have changed policies regarding how police officers can react to being filmed by civilians toting recording equipment.
But, to focus on Glik is to focus on the micro. What is difficult to see is the macro issue, the sea of change. It is hard to discern the macro issue right now because we are stuck in our news cycle, our perpetual upgrades and iterative innovations. An astronomer wants to see the entire Milky Way but cannot because our Sun is but one drop in a very large pool. We cannot see the rest of the pool.
No innovation since the printing press has changed the world in the way that the Internet has done over the past 20 years. But, in many ways, we are not that much different. Information breaks down barriers, changes societies. The more efficient means of capturing and disseminating that information, the more society will change. In the series of unrelated instances creating interconnected events, one court case in Massachusetts is a drop in the puddle. But, take many drops and add them together and a clearer picture starts to form. Micro issues turn into macro movements and the wheel or civilization turns ever so slowly. Eventually, we look back and wonder how we got here.
We, as humans, change society through the vehicle of technology. It has been like that for thousands of years and will continue for another thousand.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock
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The Case for Google
Mar 22nd
This is a response to Mat Honan’s thunderous complaint, “The Case Against Google.” The essential argument against the once-simple, once-open, once-beloved search company is that we can no longer trust it with our data. When Google became Google+, it fundamentally changed its relationship with users without asking us first. Along the way, Google has engaged in some real trickery related to these privacy changes.
Given all of that, Honan questions whether we can trust Google anymore. I contend that the argument boils down a little bit further. The question of whether Google will honor our privacy is settled. We cannot assume that it will. The root question about whether to be for or against the new Google(+) lies with us: Do we want these data to be private or not?
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Did Google+ Break Google?
There’s a secondary argument, which is actually the one Honan makes first: that Google has broken search, its core product, by rearranging itself around the unified Google+ vision. This is debatable. I was certainly worried that this would be the case when the inevitable Google+ integration with search arrived, but it was not.
Instead, Google gave us two modes of search, personal and global. Global search works just the way we’re used to, and personal search uses Google+ signals. It also promotes Google+-integrated Google properties over outside alternatives.
Honan says that “Google polluted the page with its own inferior products.” For people who prefer Twitter or Yelp over Google+ or Google Places, this is indeed a shame. Personalized search could be amazingly useful for everyone if it allowed users to choose their own social graphs.
Google tried to argue that this is technically impossible, putting the onus on Twitter and Facebook, but engineers from other social networks built Focus on the User to prove this argument false. It’s a business decision. Honan nails it precisely when he writes:
“Google wants to know things about you that you aren’t already telling it so you will continue asking it questions and it can continue serving ads against the questions you ask it. So, it feels like it has to herd people into using Google+ whether they want to go there or not.”
In order to provide the personalized service it promises, Google has to do this. It can’t just keep crawling the Web and building its own graph now that the best signals about people are contained within apps. If Google doesn’t gather these signals itself, it would have to concede valuable datasets to its competitors and merely index those.
In short, it would lose money. So instead, Google has decided to rebuild itself around its own sources of personal, real-time, topical data about its users.
There’s no question that this decision places Google’s needs over those of millions of its users. For people who don’t want to use Google+-enhanced services, Search Plus Your World is just ugly noise. The only choice is to deactivate it in preferences. That’s an unfortunate – though relatively painless – burden to put on users. I think the more compelling argument against that, though, which Honan makes, is that we can’t be sure Google won’t someday take this choice away.
However, as I said many paragraphs back, this is all still a secondary argument. For people who do use and enjoy Google+, and they do exist, Search Plus Your World is an exciting change. Personalized search can be magical. It’s what some people want. Particularly for Android users, it’s convenient to use Google’s network for everything. For people who do, personalization works. Whether you want it or not is a matter of simple preference.
That is, unless you don’t trust Google with your personal data. The choice is still simple – don’t use Google – but the issue becomes more complicated. Should we be “against Google?” Is Google “being evil” by violating its users’ privacy? Should Google be stopped? This is the fundamental question.
Is Google Evil?
Google has been shady lately. Of this, there can be no doubt. Indeed, it seems that all free, social Web companies have the capacity to be shady when given a chance. If their business is our data, they’ll do what they can to get it, including sleight and deception.
Honan points to several instances of Google’s wrongdoing. Some of the most egregious ones don’t have to do with user data, but Honan is still right to mention them, since they call Google’s corporate character into question. The one example that’s definitely relevant is Google’s end-run around Safari’s privacy settings.
Google breached a contract between Apple and its users, even Apple users who weren’t logged-in Google users. It did so in order to gather better user tracking data. While Google was hardly the only ad company using this practice, it is beyond question that it crossed an ethical line here.
Google must stop doing things like this. It’s hurting its own case. It should also stop lying about being unable to index Twitter for true, real-time topical results. It should come out and tell the truth, that it is unwilling to do this. Google thinks it can do better with its own products. If you give Google all your data, it will prove it to you.
Do You Care?
Whether you want to keep using Google depends on your definition of “evil.” It’s really stupid that this word has entered the debate, but as Honan points out, Google brought it on itself by publicizing a mantra of “Don’t be evil.” It sealed its own fate in the court of public relations. Google has shown that its internal definition of “evil” will bend to the company’s priorities.
But that’s not the definition that matters. What matters is your definition of evil.
Evil has a threshold. Naughty can be forgiven, but evil cannot. Can you forgive Google for taking liberties with your data?
How important to you is your trail of information online? Google has made abundantly clear what its stance on privacy is. How do you feel about it? If your social network activity, your search and browsing history, your location and so forth are things you don’t mind sharing, Google will give you benefits in return. Honan writes:
“Picture this scenario. You are about to leave San Francisco to drive to Lake Tahoe for a weekend of skiing, so you fire up your Android handset and ask it “what’s the best restaurant between here and Lake Tahoe?”
It’s an incredibly complex and subjective query. But Google wants to be able to answer it anyway. (This was an actual example given to me by Google.) To provide one, it needs to know things about you. A lot of things. A staggering number of things.
To start with, it needs to know where you are. Then there is the question of your route–are you taking 80 up to the north side of the lake, or will you take 50 and the southern route? It needs to know what you like. So it will look to the restaurants you’ve frequented in the past and what you’ve thought of them. It may want to know who is in the car with you–your vegan roommates?–and see their dining and review history as well. It would be helpful to see what kind of restaurants you’ve sought out before. It may look at your Web browsing habits to see what kind of sites you frequent. It wants to know which places your wider circle of friends have recommended. But of course, similar tastes may not mean similar budgets, so it could need to take a look at your spending history. It may look to the types of instructional cooking videos you’ve viewed or the recipes found in your browsing history.
It wants to look at every possible signal it can find, and deliver a highly relevant answer: You want to eat at Ikeda’s in Auburn, California. Hey, I love that place too! Try the apple pie.
There is only one path to that answer, and it goes straight through your privacy.”
Take a deep breath and think about it. Set aside questions of privacy. If you can do that, this is an amazing use case. I want this ability. I don’t want dozens of apps that are each good at recommending one thing. I want one search, searching one map, putting the things I want on that map. That’s an ideal.
If you share that ideal, Google will try to make it real. You have to be perfectly okay with Google gathering lots of data about you. To be a Google user going forward is to have nothing to hide. Is that okay?
I don’t think that question has one answer. The case for Google is, “I have nothing to hide. Help me find what I’m looking for.”
Honan cites a study saying that 73% of search users are not willing to compromise their privacy for personalized search. That’s not 100%, and it’s an easy question to say “no” to. More importantly, cultural norms shift. If Google’s service is as amazing as Google promises it is, that 73% could dwindle.
Eight years ago, after the launch of Gmail, Honan wrote:
“I’m not at all worried that my privacy is about to be invaded by the world’s most popular search engine company. Call me brave, call me crazy, but I’m not. Nor should you be.”
Today, he writes that a “far bigger” Google has now crossed the line. But I don’t think the debate has changed. Where is that line? Scanning email, tracking search and Web history, mapping out our relationships, it’s all the same. Do you care about losing control over that information? That answer starts and ends with you. If enough people say “no,” then Google will be vindicated.
@digiphile @JonMwords The biggest thing I wanted to accomplish with that story is to continue to drive a larger discussion. Hope it happens
— apocryphal mat honan (@mat) March 22, 2012
Excellent post, Mat. Let’s talk about it.
See also: What Google+ Needs To Do Now
What Google+ Should Have Been: Bing’s Linked Pages
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The Curious Case of Social Buttons in E-commerce
Mar 19th
Shopping search technology company, The Find, shared some research into the implementation of social buttons on e-commerce sites exclusively with SEW. The study reveals how which social buttons and plugins are the favorites among e-commerce sites.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Amber Case & The Invisible Button
Mar 11th
On a bone-chillingly stormy Austin Friday, I escaped into the warmth of the upmarket W Hotel and sat down for an interview with Amber Case, technology anthropologist and founder of the location platform Geoloqi. In between wolfing down a plate of gourmet macaroni cheese, Case explained her fascination with pinball machines and how Geoloqi helped her locate them. It’s the unpredictable physicality of a pinball machine that Case likes. As a comparison, she disparaged an iPhone version of pinball she once played because the actions of the pinballs were too predictable. She added that it takes 0.75 beers to reach your optimal pinball playing state (many pinball machines these days are located in pubs).
This is all to say that Amber Case has equal parts enthusiasm for precise, measurable technology and the irregular, kinetic world that we live in. For Case, technology is an enabler – but it better get out of the way of our enjoyment of the real world.
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Geoloqi is a platform for location-based functionality. According to Amber Case, it’s a “next generation” location platform. For example, one common problem with location apps is that they drain your phone’s battery. Geoloqi solves this through the use of algorithms that make use of “geofences” (virtual perimeters). Instead of leaving the GPS on your phone running all the time, which drains your battery, Geoloqi essentially turns GPS off when it’s not needed.
Amber Case and the author.
How Will Geoloqi Succeed When Others Have Failed?
Geoloqi is a very new company. Along with co-founder Aaron Parecki, Case had been thinking about location since 2010. But it wasn’t until May 2011 that she quit her day job to focus on it. Shortly after, the company got funded. This year Geoloqi launched SDKs and just this week, at SXSW, it announced three new partners: Appcelerator (a mobile development platform), Factual (a global location database) and Locaid (a carrier location platform).
Location isn’t an easy business. Companies such as Simplegeo have not fulfilled their potential. So what makes Amber Case think she has solved the problems that affected first generation location services? “I had watched a lot of geo companies go down,” said Case, “and so I’d been keeping this large notebook of what made them go.” Factors she considered in the notebook included pricing, positioning, time when they came out, feature set. She concluded that the big issues were battery life, setting up the logic for the geo-fences to trigger, and making a visual editor.
The Quest For The Invisible Button
Amber Case is passionate about next generation interfaces and geofences are a key reason why. She’s particularly interested in interfaces that automate certain tasks. In other words, the technology gets out of the way. While Foursquare made its reputation as the first truly large scale location-based app, it has an enduring problem: people have to physically “check in” to a place. Case said that she’s a big fan of Foursquare and admires what the company has achieved, but with Geoloqi she wants to enable similar apps to have automatic check-ins.
Location apps should be seamless, said Case. With the rapid evolution of Internet devices – particularly smartphones – buttons can now be anywhere on a touchscreen. That reduces friction for the user, because they can touch anywhere on the screen and the right button for their context pops up. Taking that concept a step further, can we have an “invisible button”? Or as Case paraphrased it, “what triggers without having to be there?”
This question fascinated Case when she was at university, but now she thinks she has the answer: “it’s a geofence, it’s location, it’s context.” No longer do you need to click a button to do something on a smartphone, because “suddenly the trigger is you.”
To sum up, Case referred to a quote from Ubiquitous Computing pioneer Mark Weiser: “The best interface should get out of the way and let you live your life.”
Next Up: Cyborgs
Ultimately we may see these invisible buttons become part of our bodies. In other words, we become cyborgs. Prior to Geoloqi, Case called herself a “Cyborg Anthropologist.” In a 2008 blog post she defined a cyborg as “a symbiotic fusion of human and machine.”
Cyborgs may be her ultimate vision, but for now Amber Case is content to bring these ideas into smartphone location apps. With Geoloqi, she aims to make smartphones automated and responsive to our context.
Case concluded our interview by saying that “our tools are mental extensions… and they’re evaporating, they’re disappearing.”
I can’t help but agree: once technology essentially disappears from our view, we will have less friction in our life and enjoy it more. Remember that the next time you pull out your smartphone to check into somewhere.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.
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South Korea Rate-Cut Case Diminishes as Oil Costs Climb: Economy – BusinessWeek
Feb 26th
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South Korea Rate-Cut Case Diminishes as Oil Costs Climb: Economy
BusinessWeek By Eunkyung Seo and Shamim Adam Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) — South Korea's case for cutting interest rates is diminishing as domestic sentiment improves and gains in oil costs threaten to push inflation beyond the government's forecast. South Korean Manufacturers' Confidence Rises to Five-Month High |
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SEO implications of the NLA vs. Meltwater & PRCA case – browser media
Feb 16th
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SEO implications of the NLA vs. Meltwater & PRCA case
browser media As someone with a foot in both the PR and SEO camps, I've been aware of the Newspaper Licensing Agency's (NLA) licence to print money for sometime: I had the privilege of asking my clients to pay for future licences but also to make a historic payment … |
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Nomenclature: The Industry Case For and Against SEO
Feb 15th
“SEO is dead” is the debate that just won’t die. Last week, Andy Betts inspired us to consider again the role and definition of SEO in the age of convergence and collaboration. Search marketers and industry leaders share their thoughts.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Nomenclature: The Industry Case For and Against SEO – Search Engine Watch
Feb 15th
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Nomenclature: The Industry Case For and Against SEO
Search Engine Watch by Miranda Miller, February 15, 2012 Comments SEO is dead. No, for real this time, I swear. Maybe. Well, you see, now it's like… zombie SEO. It's rumored to have died a few horrible deaths over a few years. And the SEO debate has been eating my … SES New York 2012 Featuring Latest Search Topics, Including Brand Protection … Andrew Girdwood: "Search has Evolved Significantly in the Last Year" |
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Unmasking an SEO spammer and rewarding their competition (a case study) – ZDNet (blog)
Feb 9th
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Unmasking an SEO spammer and rewarding their competition (a case study)
ZDNet (blog) By Stephen Chapman | February 9, 2012, 2:26am PST Summary: Starting with the comment of an SEO spammer, I bite off more than I can chew when I investigate just who the spammer is. If you read just one case study all month, let this one be it! |
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Pittsburgh SEO Company Releases 3 Client Case Studies, Each Showing Over 100 … – PR Web (press release)
Feb 9th
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Pittsburgh SEO Company Releases 3 Client Case Studies, Each Showing Over 100 …
PR Web (press release) Pittsburgh SEO Company, Prodigal Solutions (http://prodigalsolutions.com), released 3 SEO case studies, each showing over 100% increase in organic search traffic for their clients. Pittsburgh SEO Company, Prodigal Solutions … |
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