My Digital FootPrint

Time does not exist, it is something we have created to enable understanding. However time, some measure between two events is an interesting property. When you look at an image (picture) in "Linear time" (streaming) - seeing small pixels/ bits as they pass a point (let not do binary), it is impossible to work out the picture from the pixels.  You need all the streams aligned and when you step back you see the image. Looking at one pixel does not allow you to see the whole. When the separation, of an innovation/ idea to 10 million users, is only time; the question become how far along the journey do you go before the story becomes a picture that most can see, and how near to the end to you have to get before it is clear for everyone? What enables/ allows someone to see a picture before it exists and how many bits/ pixels do you need to have seen ?

April 19 Arkkeo † Relaunched in 2018. Now, "links to your customers' payment cards and automatically rewards them for making frequent purchases." Formerly, "automatically stores and archives all the purchase receipts, warranty, insurance, healthcare and travel documents you receive from the businesses and service providers that you deal with." Camilstore Personal storage system. "Note that it's a 'storage system', not just a 'file system'." CozyCloud † - "a Personal Cloud you can host, customize and fully control" dappre † "Allow people and organisations to subscribe to you and share the data you want to share" Dashlane † - "The world's best password manager & secure digital wallet. Digitteria † - "...puts people at the heart of managing their data usage. Digitteria’s products allow people to protect and share their information with third parties on their own terms." Digi.me...

The image come from https://iclif.org/articles/give-employees-freedom-within-framework/ a super interesting post "Give Your Employees Freedom Within a Framework"

Read this excellent Medium article on "The Age of the Negative Review Is Over" by @jenniferrabin   thinking about no response to worse than negative when we consider attention.  Have a different issue with reviews and that is that I no longer "TRUST" them, principally because of the emerging and growing set of rules, revisions, lies and so much material on what to do to get one deleted, reversed or hidden.  I have come to depend on feedback and reviews for choices, the ability to read others thinking has been so beneficial for online booking and purchases. The reason is that a while ago we booked a wonderful 4* hotel in the 3 valleys; to read the week before we left a very long, detailed and negative review. We left for skiing a tad worried. We arrived, the staff were amazing, the location was spot on, the food was excellent and the lodging was exactly as described. The previous empty nester reviewer obviously booked a 4* expecting a 6* and as it was ...

Consent is complex , however it has to be solved - so what would a user experience look like? Given that we have to convey an awful lot of messages in a very small space, in a short about of time and be sure we have done our best efforts to make the user aware of what they are agreeing to. Given that under the ideals of data portability/ sharing the user should be able to choose, any system cannot favour or stop the user from doing anything, but we should enable the user to make an informed decision.  This is not a solution, but presented as a conceptual framework of what we need to achieve.  sets out the red, amber, green or some other colour base format. The colour itself would be calculated from answering a set of questions, and the answers to those questions will be key to informing the user about what the company can and will do with their data if the users agrees. A company cannot pick their colour, it is be calculated and provable based on a st...

This thought piece explores how business executives ought to be debating control over user (data), is less about where data is collected and stored but rather where, or rather how, individual data is used, monetised and by whom. -- Given that platform companies such as Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Baidu, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent Xiaomi as examples complicate, confuse and officiate what they are actually doing with our personal data, how can leaders position their business to become truly customer centric and put the customer first. As a context, economics defines utility companies (gas, electricity, water, telecoms) as only having one true differentiator - price. Given the ubiquity and certainty of one unit of electricity is the same from where-every you buy it, the market players create bundles and offers to hide the actual price and to make comparisons between the same utility very difficult or near impossible. However, what happens when you don't have a “price” e.g. Fac...

For sometime it has been a wrestle as to why "consent" could be the wrong word.  I have looked at a number of ways of exploring this thinking, but have failed to nail the "why."  Here are a few previous blog exploring the thinking: Why the portability of consent is important is  explored here   Layered consent is like peeling an onion, only to find it is not an onion is explored here Why opt-in and opt-out are the beginnings of consent is explored here What level of consent is reasonable the balance of forgiveness vs approval is explored here So this thinking got me looking at when consent ends in the traditional sense of the word.  Consent being that you provide your approval for something to happen. In the context it is used in law, consent is most often interrupted for the next action, next event or next period of time and once the event, time or action has passed the original consent is lapsed and new consent is sort. Consent cannot be ...

The economic argument and case for data portability (mobility) is set out here. Running with the assumption that you agree that data portability/ mobility will create value for the data economy, we need to also think about the thorny issue of layered consent. Some posts that have explored areas of consent Layered Consent: like peeling the onion, only to find it is not an onion! Why “#Privacy-by-Design” is more than playing the game of #ethics of opt-in or the #morals of opt-out. What level of consent is reasonable ..... However in this post, the purpose is to explore what happens when a copy of the data has arrived at the new home, where is consent.  Define :     User                                   [an individual who has agreed to the T&Cs’ to access or use a Data_Holder’s service] ...

This is the PEW report BY LEE RAINIE AND JANNA ANDERSON Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age "Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything. They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos. Still, experts worry they can also put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, and could result in greater unemployment" Download the full report  Theme 3 is focused on "Humanity and human judgment are lost when data and predictive modeling become paramount"   is excellent - indeed the whole report is.   https://www.pewinternet.org/2017/02/08/theme-3-humanity-and-human-judgment-are-lost-when-data-and-predictive-modeling-become-paramount/

Just read "We Are Data" Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves by John Cheney-Lippold On Page 191 John explores the Else Test ---- At a simple level a nested Python If; Else statement can look like the code below. This is beautiful in its simplicity and offers a repeatable and deterministic way to match a grade to the logical number of the mark obtained.   In each case there is one output;   based on the actual input mark. Happy days if grade >= 90 :     print( "A grade" ) elif grade >= 80 :     print( "B grade" ) elif grade >= 70 :     print( "C grade" ) elif grade >= 65 :     print( "D grade" ) else :     print( "Failing grade" ) Let’s change the case slightly to something which says has more difficult to answer.   “Are you are good parent?”    We can approach the problem in two ways.   The simple way that hides the...

It is insane that this book has such a low coverage and poor reviews. It is brilliant. The book explores the way algorithms interpret and influence our behaviour. The book forces you to re-assess what you think data says you are. We love the idea that data and the compute model follow our mental models for binary abstraction in defining who we are. The “I am male, female or prefer not to say,” is how we believe the systems see us. John explores why they don’t. In the system we are all part-everything based on the data and how you react to media, because of this the machine see you as your behaviour to what they can see and not what you think or believe. This delta between what you think you are and what the machine thinks you are is unknown and often not reachable. We can correct false data but not false interruption. John quotes lots of people and work we all know, but also many who are not on the usual circuit which makes the book far more informative as it brings in new thi...

Key message : decisions regarding the right type of initial explicit and informed “consent” sort from customers is currently a delegated authority from the board. This article argues that there is an imperative to bring back “consent” decisions to the board; at least for a while. The board needs to debate “consent” in light of ideas such as “privacy by design”, ethical AI, brand values, privacy policy, cookie policy and culture; given that consistency across these critical business areas are increasingly core differentiators. - - As a context, much of the classic(al) thinking and definition(s) of consent are here on wikipedia . There is excellent technical work on consent from Kantara for both the user interface and back office processes based on new consent thinking. MEF is publishing really helpful thinking on UI/UX. In the idea of implementing “privacy by design”, I published this blog exploring the concept of Approval vs Forgiveness as the method of gaining consent when co...

“The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power” So I took this one for the team, and read every single page of the near 700 pages.  It is a slog, even for me as a massive advocate of privacy, PII, identity, security, trust and data.  Massive respect to S hoshana Zuboff for 15 years of thinking, research, dedication and writing on and to the topic. This is half of a life's dedication.  Yes I wrote and published " My Digital Footprint - where your privacy is someone else's business model "  10 years ago and whilst we now have lots of proof now, the theory has not moved on.  There is a lot written on this book already. If you want a summary of Shoshana work these are some of these better write ups. WIRED , FT ,  ZDNET ,  The Guardian ,  Harvard , Linux Journal , The Verge , Philosophical .  For those who want a few videos try these TWIT , Democracy Now My thinking I am critical...