After reading Benkoil's piece, "How The New York Times, Others Are Experimenting with Augmented Reality," some of the predictions made in Neuromancer can be seen in the present day. Augmented Reality is, by design, a convergence of the physical and technological worlds. The article defines AR as “layering digital information onto the physical world." With AR, the physical and the virtual become one stream of information and become a single medium. With a smart phone or portable electronic device, Augmented Reality has potentially boundless limits.
The article mentions multiple examples of how AR is being used and pushed in multiple mediums, citing everything from Esquire magazine's plans to integrate AR into their reader experience to how the U.S. Postal Service uses AR to help customers decide how big of a box they should buy to ship their goods. The article, overall, is showing that more companies, groups, and individuals are investing time and money into Augmented Reality technology because they believe that it is useful and marketable in the future.
With a greater push for AR technology, however, comes a greater need for adequate measures to protect the privacy of, well, just about everyone. At the very foundation of AR is the ability to gain access to information about the physical world that is not explicitly in sight. This creates what the article calls the "creepiness" factor. The author is right when he says that "it can be frightening to think of the possibilities for invasion of privacy."
With more money and more time being invested into AR, we should push for legislation to ensure that the development of these products does not disrupt the privacy of everyday individuals and businesses. Imagine a world where someone can point a camera phone at you and gain access to your Facebook profile, name, phone number, or personal information based on face recognition gained through Augmented Reality. AR has many positive projections (like the ability to know more than meets the eye) but we must be careful and invest cautiously into the technology, making sure we protect privacy along the way.
What do you think is the best way to protect privacy in AR?
I agree that there is a need for some sort of effort to protect the privacy of individuals as AR continues to develop. The problem, I feel, lies in that technology like AR develops and evolves so rapidly and that our legal system in unable to keep up. For example, file sharing and the music industry. I know very few college students who download their music legally, and this is mainly because these particular students feel that there is any real legal threat.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point about the legislation and ramifications for file sharing. This could possibly go a few different ways. First, society could just change/evolve to where it would be the norm and not weird or creepy to access that information because there might be a relaxed view on privacy in the future. Another scenario is that the legislations protects and cracks down on privacy issues or the legislations fall behind and puts people's privacy is in jeopardy. With new technologies it's hard to monitor everything that is going on behind the scenes so it not always easy to protect the people.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article, I was also concerned about privacy issues. The leaders in the convergence race (companies like Facebook and Google) aren't exactly the most pro-privacy groups on the planet, and when there's a dollar to be made these companies often either fail to take precautions to protect privacy or violate privacy outright.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it would be concerning if people could scan individuals in order to retrieve information on them. I think legislation may be necessary to prevent this from happening, but I'm also curious to see if a more privacy-friendly company could develop a technology that would 'block' scans directed at a person.
But, like Nathaniel says, norms could always change to where it's not weird for people to have access to that kind of information. Personally, I will probably be very slow to adapt if that's the case.
I have unfortunately [or fortunately] become quite a cynic when it comes to the promises of democracy. Although I understand the goals of deliberative democracy, I feel like AR just has too many technological and philosophical dimensions to it for a national debate. I feel that any debate over AR would be like the debate over U.S. airwaves, confined to experts and special interests. I don't think legislation is the right method to address privacy issues. Instead, the makers of AR should adhere to some kind of ethical code they develop themselves in order to ensure privacy rights.
ReplyDeleteI think David has a good point. The social networking sites have certain privacy laws that have kept them out of trouble and in business so far, and makers of AR technology would be wise to follow that example. That said, if you're walking down the street and AR accesses appraisal district records to tell you who lives there and what the house is worth, that's not exactly the same kind of voluntary information that a social networking site user gives up.
ReplyDeleteAll that said, I'm not sure legislation could ever keep up with this sort of technology. As it is, we're still working on passing laws that take into account that most people have cell phones.
Our legislature (and consequently, judiciary) is no longer able to keep up with the advances in technology. Scientists are creating new dimensions and applications that are controversial at a rate that exceeds society's moral consensus. Without guidance from their constituents our lawmakers are lost about how to satisfy and protect citizens. What privacy should be protected? I recently watched an episode of Law and Order: SVU that showed an app that displays sex offenders in a 5 block radius on a cell phone. Is this too far? It's as if we're putting a digital billboard in their front yard.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Dave and Jenna. The fact that hardly anybody reads over the terms and conditions of use before using a new product probably indicates that we as consumers are not doing our part to protect our own privacy. I think the first step to ensuring that new technology doesn't negatively impact our ability to try to control what is known about us and by whom is for people to start paying more attention to their relationships with the businesses and organizations they regularly interact with -- how these relationships are structured, and what thy entail. The fact is, whether we know it or not, those relationships change in big ways when we click the little "I Agree" box on those annoying terms and conditions forms.
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